Day four on The Strip. Doing my best to become a better photographer. The past few weeks of going out everyday no matter what, makes me feel like I have wasted seventeen years. Actually, there is a ton of shit that makes me feel like I have wasted my life. Is this normal? I am not sure. I think I might just be getting into a manic phase. This happens. I will be 150% working my ass off, super productive, waking up early, and then BOOM! I crumble into a heap of tears. I can't even get out of bed, brush my teeth, make myself a bowl of cereal, or let anyone know what is happening. I disappear into my depression. I hope that is not what this is, but I have been here. It seems like too much of a coincedence.
I guess, the trick would be to keep the momentum going. If I slow down my manic energy a little but keep it going maybe it won't burn out so fast. Maybe, it will not lead to a long period of depression If I can learn to trick it, and get it to do my bidding? This is how I deal with my mental illness. I can not afford to see a doctor on a regular basis or to go to therapy so I developed my own ways. None of them have been permanent fixes and some have not worked at all but few have made me worse. That is better than most doctors have done.
Back to the photos.
Over the past 30 days I had around 340 unedited images that "made the cut". That is a lot. That is too many photos. That tells me that I am not looking at my images correctly and that I am keeping too many safe photos. For someone who comes from a film back ground, its hard to throw images away. Film wasn't cheap, and who knows what you might use another out of focus incorrectly exposed poorly composed image of a something in front of a something, right? Wrong. I have to toss images. So what if I trash a photo or two that are "usable". I am not looking for usable, I am looking for great.
Out of those 340 photos, I, well, let me explain the process:
First, I go through the images straight from the SD card. I don't save all of the Raw files. I keep the images on the card. I move the ones I like (I am not being super picky yet) to a file on my hard drive. Since I do not have an end to this project I can not really say how often I do this, or how many photos I load to a file until I move on to the next step. In this case it was over a span of 30 days (probably eight spent shooting) which ended up being 340 decent photos.
Second, I go through the good photo file (the bad photos are left on the card and the card is formatted) and apply a rating of 1 star to all of the photos that are better than the rest, then I go through the 1 star images (in this case 145) and a 2 star rating to those that are good, and deserve to be edited for stock sites, at least. After that, I go through the 2 star images (86) and apply a 3 star rating to my favorites. Usually, the number is smaller, but this time I ended up with 18 three star images. Those will go on my website/portfolio, and I try to edit all of those before I go out to shoot again. That has never happened. I am always unorganized, alway procrastinating, and always too eager to go out shooting when I just got finished looking at a bunch of photos. Like now, it is 6am. I only edited 5 out of the 18 and I am definitely going to shoot tomorrow around 10 (I won't leave the house until noon do to an unusually extra needy other).
Okay, that is basically my process. That is for now, only. I am not really a creature of habit when it comes to post production. The problem being that I enjoy taking photos and I enjoy holding a finished print in my hand. Hanging an 30"x40" print on a gallery wall, stepping down from the ladder, backing up just enough, and there you have it--your work for all, yes, I like that also. The monotony of post production, though? The tedium, the blurred vision staring, and the second guessing, well, I find that torturous. Still, I would not put my work in another's hands.
My hatred of post production will lead me to another topic which I will cover later, much later. It's a simple concept, and one that, I feel, a lot of folks have forgotten. Getting it right in camera seems to be lost on many, but for me, I have started to trash photos which require anything I would consider photoshop work. To me, that means anything I would not do, with ease, in a traditional darkroom.
The extent of my post production work is simple. I adjust the exposure slightly, contrast slightly, highlights and shadows are tweaked somewhat, and I lightly toy with the color balance usually in the saturation of reds, yellows and blues. I do not crop, ever, never not once and to me if that is necessary to save an image then that image is unsalvagable, trash, muck, shit, no longer of interest to me, gone. I don't sharpen, reduce noise, and I certainly don't remove or add objects. In my imperfect world, this one, I am given the opportunity to create perfection. That being said, if there exists an object, like a tree or power line, in one of my photographs then I made the choice to take that photo and it has a place in the composition. If the photo would be better with out it then I should have taken a different photo. "Fixing it in post" should not be part of the photographers vocabulary. It is not part of mine. I would equate that with saying, "I have no idea how to frame a shot". Of course, this is different for commercial work. Sometimes you can not have certain things in your photo for legal reasons. Don't get the wrong idea, I am not trashing commercial photographers, so save your nasty comments for another time. There will be another time, don't worry.
That is all for now. I know this was a boring post, but really, no one but my mother reads this shit anyway.
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