Newsletter - Editing down from thousands of exposures...

Hello,

Photography is not just about making the pictures, it's about telling stories. About documenting things you see in the light it was and sharing what you saw.

20 years ago we did it analog, on film. We had up to 36 photographs to make our point, maybe 38 if we had a newer model camera. We had to think, make sure, be present and mindful. Then we had to rewind the film and start over.

Now we photograph on memory cards. We make thousands and thousands of photos in a very short time. Photography has become better, more moment driven, and that single moment is so much easier to freeze as we hold the shutter down, milliseconds at a time.

But what to do when you face a memory card filled to the brim with thousands of exposures? How do you pick THE one?

Some people call it culling, I call it editing. We edit down. Down and down and down. Like that game I used to play with sand when I was a kid, where I'd throw it in the air and each time less would be in my hand. We plow through our photographs first once, then a second time, then maybe a third, fourth or fifth time until what is left is just the absolute essence of what we saw. 

Yes, yes, Kristine, you say. I know this. But HOW?

That's the hard part. 

When I edit, for a photograph to make it through to the end it needs to sing to me. It needs to make me feel something. It needs to please my eye and sing and make me feel all at once. It needs to be a photograph I made because I got excited, because as it turns out, those have historically been the ones that make other people excited too. First I keep all the ones that may have an impact on the story. Second I keep the ones that are the best from the first, and third I keep the ones that make me feel. Only then can I look at the story and think, hey, this was what happened from what I saw.

Sometimes the work is just too close for comfort and you need to hire help. I have a project I've worked on for 10 years and the hard drive has so many different milestones, both for the subject and for myself, that I had to hire an editor to help me make sense of it. For 10 years I've edited this story for different reasons and many times it's been published, but it feels fractured, broken into pieces of large events and small everyday happenings. It's been interesting to see what the editor picks, it's like my words are given a new language I didn't know I spoke.

I will share this project soon, but for now I'd like you to think about how you edit your work. What is it about your very favourite photographs that make you excited? Do they make you feel something?

Share some of your favourite work with me and tell me why you love it!

All for now,

Kristine