Photography Class

greenpea

When I get the opportunity, I like to take what ever photography happens to be offered at the local community college. Currently I'm taking a class from 40 year Seattle Times photographer Greg Gilbert. His class has been great, as a photojournalist, his style is all about capturing the moment "photojournalistic style" or street photography. His approach is all about ALL (Angle, Lighting, Lens).

Today though he brought in travel photograher Cliff Hollenbeck. Cliff's pictures were amazing; the guy has shot images of some of the most beautiful places and people on every corner of the world. But something that Cliff Hollenbeck said really made me think (I'll paraphrase, since I don't have good notes) "Its not about the pictures you shoot, its about the pictures you show".

I suppose this could be taken a couple of different ways, you could say only show your very best pictures, or as I am choosing to view it--if you don't show your pictures who cares how many or what pictures you take (glass half full ).

So I am commiting myself to showing more of my images on dgrin (for better or worse ).

ian408

Some interesting points raised.

If you had to cull your existing galleries, how much do you think your
keeper rate would be?

schmoo

greenpea wrote:

So I am commiting myself to showing more of my images on dgrin (for better or worse ).

Bring it on!!

I have to say that I adopted that latter sentiment in the last year or so. I used to push everything into a single directory that was viewable by pretty much anyone, but now I only keep presentable ones up for the public. I wasn't sure at first if that was an honest/accurate representation of my skills as an artist, but my theory on that is as long as you think that you can continue to create presentable shots, then it must be so.

ian408

schmoo wrote:

I wasn't sure at first if that was an honest/accurate...

I think it's fair and honest because it's your representation. Not mine or
anyone else's.

greenpea

ian408 wrote:

Some interesting points raised.

If you had to cull your existing galleries, how much do you think your
keeper rate would be?

Right now I have 12,688 images on initialphotography.smugmug.com of that only a small fraction are visable (and that 12,688 represents a fraction of my images on harddrives, DVDs, CDs, and in shoe boxes). Its a constant struggle to catagorize and keyword those images in a meaningful way as that number grows. I'm having to constantly copy, move, reogranize, and delete those images. But that's not what I'm really talking about.

What I want to do is present more of my work on dgrin (and other public forums), and (hopefully) get feed back, and use that to hopefully improve myself as a photographer. Of the pictures I publicly display on my site I figure I only show off 1% which definately isn't representative of my photography as a whole. The ultimate goal being to start using the resources of dgrin and its users to better improve myself as a photographer.

What's the point of taking a picture of you don't show it. Sounds simple, but so often I take the picture, decide its a keeper, and yet I never show it to anyone.

ian408

Andy taught me something. If you notice when I shoot, I chimp in my downtime.

I remove a lot of stuff in the field but I still take home a bunch too. I need to
get better at getting rid of stuff. I'm almost too brutal but it makes for less work
after the fact.

BTW, not saying it is right or wrong. It just works for me.

greenpea

ian408 wrote:

Andy taught me something. If you notice when I shoot, I chimp in my downtime.

I remove a lot of stuff in the field but I still take home a bunch too. I need to
get better at getting rid of stuff. I'm almost too brutal but it makes for less work
after the fact.

BTW, not saying it is right or wrong. It just works for me.

I like that idea, and I need to make that more of a habit. With my previous camera it was difficult to really judge an image because my LCD was tiny. My new camera makes it a lot easier.

Yet I still make fun of a friend of mine who is notorious for chimping and deleting his bad images, then missing *the shot* because he was deleting his last shot.

jdryan3

Just how many is enough?
I try to balance over editing to just turning my galleries into a dumping site one can't get thru. I can be too critical or fall too much in love with one image, so I need to expand what I put out there for more & better comments.

Several people quote Ansel Adams "12 images is a good year's work" (paraphrased). I was reading an interview (I think in PDN) and the photographer's take was a little different and ambitious.

Where does this lead to? For me, I have set a personal goal of 1 image a week. At the end of the year, I should have 52 good images - a nice body of work, something to create a decent portfolio from. Of those I want to print 12 18x24 images.

Believe me, I have a whole lot more than 52 images in my personal galleries. But my goal is to go out shooting once a week, try to be creative in the process and get one image that stands out. Just 1.

I also have discovered that it is best if I edit/cull a while after shooting, since I can be a little more critical when I'm emotionally removed from the moment. Some weeks I can't get out. Some times I get 2 or 3 keepers, other times none. But the times I get none give me new ideas or I learn why they are :puke and what I need to try and do differently next time.

greenpea

For me I think its about deleting the obviously bad pics in camera, then going though the pictures in LR full screen and getting rid of more. Then I usually still have too many to deal with.

I don't know about 12 good images a year (would Ansel Adams have said that if he shot digital?) or 52 good images a year. But everytime I go out for a specific shoot I would like to have one image from that shoot that is worthy of printing at least 8 x 12 if not larger (all though it doesn't always work out that way).

Ultimately I think I end up doing half a dozen large prints of my pictures a year (however I'm starting to run out of room to hang pictures ).

jdryan3

greenpea wrote:

But everytime I go out for a specific shoot I would like to have one image from that shoot that is worthy of printing at least 8 x 12 if not larger (all though it doesn't always work out that way).

I think we are on the same page. 1 decent shot per outing. Your 6 and my 12 large prints are almost the same. My point was to get out and shoot at least once a week, exercising those creative brain waves. Nothing more.

RE: Ansel & digital. OK, so maybe he would bump it up to 13 prints a year.