Editing

Tina Manley

I attended an editing workshop all last week. We edited 7000 of my Honduran photos down to 136. Here is one that made the final cut:



What do you think?

Tina

craig_d

I like it, but I wish it was a bit less murky in the shadows. Maybe that would ruin the starkness of it, though. This is an issue I struggle with in my own B&W shots (which are always digital conversions from color). Simply desaturating a good color shot tends to make for a very dull B&W shot. Sometimes you need strong contrasts, murky shadows, even some blown highlights, to really make the most of an image in B&W. I think here you capture a sense of people surviving at a level of poverty and deprivation that is virtually unknown in the USA.

michswiss

Tina Manley wrote:

What do you think?

Tina

I think it's lovely, but feels like it wants to be a part of a multiple image story. I'm really curious how you found the editing workshop, both literally and figuratively. So many images inside of a week must have been an enormous challenge.

Tina Manley

michswiss wrote:

I think it's lovely, but feels like it wants to be a part of a multiple image story. I'm really curious how you found the editing workshop, both literally and figuratively. So many images inside of a week must have been an enormous challenge.

It was a challenge, but it was fun, too. The teacher was Maggie Steber, an excellent photographer and editor. I was very interested in the editing process, too, so I took lots of notes. Maggie says that first you have to consider what the end result is going to be - book, magazine, newspaper article - etc. and remember that editing is very subjective and no two editors will come up with the same choices.

What she does with a large body of work, like my 7000+ images, is to go through them first very quickly without thinking too much, putting everything into an A selection (favorites) and a B selection (maybes). Then, considering the final use*, she goes through the A selection and chooses photos that would be informative for the project and those that might be used for transitions. She also chooses the best of similar situations (considering light, composition, aesthetic values) and moves the others into the B selection.

Look at the selections 5 to 10 times and leave in those that you can still stand to look at. Live with the selection for awhile. Sleep on it and let your subconscious process the selections.

Maggie advises getting small prints made of your final A selections and laying them out in a linear fashion with like situations together. See how they flow one into another - like a movie or storyboard. Choose one photo that really grabs the viewer as your lead photo. Before you finalize the edit, go back through all of the B selection and be sure you haven't overlooked anything.

That's the way she edited my 7000+ down to 136. I noticed that she chooses situations with several people over those with one person. She likes evidence of communication in the photos. She also likes action taking place on the edges of the photos and is not bothered by out-of-focus foregrounds. That's the subjective editing she mentioned but she is such an experienced editor that I trust her judgement. She's going to help me edit several thousand more.

I think I did learn a lot about editing during the week by watching her edit the photos of the other 6 photographers in the workshop.

Tina

*A selection for an American magazine would be different from a selection for a European magazine (more edgy). A newspaper article would include more traditional photos. A photo story would need a beginning, middle and end. A photo essay would not. She gave the example of editing photos for the National Geographic, saying that they would choose parallel photos ending in the same place like a river and a road, but with one being factual and the other being lyrical.

Flyinggina

I really love the photo. I think that bringing out the background more could easily overpower the human element, so I like it the way it is.

Thank so much for sharing some of what you learned in your editing workshop. I like the combination of instinctive response to photos and, subsequently, a more thoughtful analysis of their use. Also, the "sleeping on it" advice.

Virginia