Shooting with Intent

     One of my favourite quotes in the realm of photography is attributed to the incomparable Ansel Adams. "There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept"

     With the rise of digital photography, it has been estimated that there are now more photos taken in a single year than in the entire history of analog (film) photography. What this means to serious practitioners of the photographic arts is that,if we want our craft to be taken seriously,  we have to up our game. We have to learn the craft of photography in such a way that the  images we create are powerful. It's no longer enough to take a "good picture". Any of the millions of people with a cell phone in their pocket can do that. Photography has become so simplified, that almost anyone can take a decently exposed, relatively sharp picture of whatever happens to be in front of their camera/cell phone. If we are just "taking pictures" without any thought to composition, style , the visual elements or the final presentation of our work. we are really doing nothing more than contributing to the mass mediocrity of the millions of images posted to the web on a daily basis. 

     The term "editing", in modern parlance has come to be synonymous with "post processing". If an image is solidly good but could be made even better with some post processing enhancement, by all means do it. But do not rely on post processing to save a mediocre image. The result will simply be a boring photo with some pretty enhancement. I'm old school. I started my photographic journey in the days of film. To me, "editing", in the truest sense of the word means choosing the best image before even reaching the stage of possible processing and presentation.  

     But for a photograph to really work. the image should  be made with intent   

     Here is an anecdote from my days shooting film. A long time ago, a photographer friend of mine invited me and my wife (at the time) to his place for dinner.  After our meal, he asked if we would like to see some of his photos. In those days we were both shooting a lot of slide film and he dutifully set up his projector and showed us a couple of trays of his images. (Kodak slide trays held 140 slides each.) After his slide show he asked what I thought. I was diplomatic. I said that I liked it and that he had some very good stuff, which was true. However what I didn't say was that the vast majority of the images were, in my opinion,  pretty mediocre. 

     A few weeks later, my wife (at the time) and I returned the hospitality and had them over for dinner.  After the meal, my friend asked to see some of my photos. I set up my projector, a Rollei, which used European slide trays of only 50 slides each and proceeded to show them 40 or so carefully selected images of my stuff. My friend's wife was positively effusive (almost embarrassingly so) in her praise of my pictures. My friend, in what he saw as an effort to defend his own work, said something to the effect of "My slide show would look good too if I only showed my best shots!"  My response was something to the effect of "Well why would you show people your shit?"  I was pretty outspoken in those days.  I'd like to think that I've somewhat  mellowed with age. Needless to say, the evening did not end particularly well! 

     In all honesty, I cannot claim to be a much better photographer than my friend was at the time. But I was definitely a more critical and ruthless editor! 

     Bear in mind that, in those days,  I was shooting lovely Kodachrome slide film. A roll of 36 exposures, with processing, cost about twenty dollars. Yup, 20 bucks for 36 shots! For about the same money today, we can pop an SD card into our favourite electronic whiz-banger and get upwards of a thousand images. It's small wonder that our creative selectivity in what we shoot and what we present has taken a massive tumble!

     Okay, I realize that this has become something of a long winded rant from an old school photographer to simply say "Quality not Quantity!" But, there is more to it than that. In my opinion, If you have more than a few hundred pictures posted to any photo sharing website or social media page, you're not a photographer. You're just someone who likes to take pictures. I know, that sounds like an incredibly arrogant thing to say and perhaps it is. But let me turn that arrogance around with a simple question. Are you really arrogant enough to believe that anyone wants to wade through a thousand or more of your questionable images to find a handful of really good ones? Or worse. Are you really arrogant enough to believe that more than a thousand of the pictures you have taken are really great and deserve to be shared with the world? Editing pictures to be presented  is part of the craft of photography. It is either done by the photographer or perhaps by a highly skilled photo editor. It should not be left to the viewer. No one in this day and age has the time to look critically at that many images. If you want some respect as a photographer, show a little respect for your viewers. Their time is valuable.

     There are trillions of images on the net. As a photographer, if you're not editing and presenting your best work, you're just adding to the clutter.