On Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 10:51 PM Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 7/30/2019 3:35 PM, Tina Manley wrote:
> > PESO:
> >
> > I am cleaning up old files on my Drobo and trying to consolidate
> > everything. Years ago, I spent a couple of weeks with Maggie Steber, a
> > photo editor, who helped me edit 50,000 of my Honduran photos down to
> about
> > 24. The problem is that I have many, many more than the original 50,000
> > that she edited. According to my LR files, I have 174,258 photos of
> > Honduras. If I spend the rest of my life editing them I will not finish.
> > But just glancing through, it looks like there are a lot I would include
> in
> > a final edit. So what to do?
>
> Are you confusing two different processes? Selection and editing are two
> separate things, to which you refer with the
> same word. Or perhaps selection and processing are two parts of editing?
>
That's an interesting observation, Moose. I supposed that Tina was
thinking about "editing" from the standpoint of her erstwhile "editors,"
rather than image processing. "Selection" I guess.
I was thinking about Tina's problem in the shower (where all the best
thinking and singing goes on). I don't have a comprehensible solution for
Tina because I cannot comprehend the scale of selection she is dealing
with. But having devoted precious shower thinking to it, I'll natter a bit.
I did have a professor in grad school who was helpful on something related
to the process of judging one's own work which may have some relevance. I
was balking at publishing a piece that this professor (1) had not read. He
had been told by another professor (2) who had read it that it was
publishable right out of the hopper. When Prof (1) told me about Prof
(2)'s opinion, I said that I thought it was not really ready to be
published. Prof (1) interpreted my reticence as perfectionism. The next
part is what stuck with me: he said that we are not the ultimate judges of
our own work; that's up to somebody else. That was a liberating thought
at the time.
I didn't ultimately publish the paper because my reticence was not a matter
of perfectionism. But I have generally, when forced to it, tried to look
into my own heart and psyche for selection criteria. Above all, it is
impossible to know what someone else wants out of your work. Tina's job is
in some senses to try to get at that. That motive also opens up one's
sense of awareness about competition: "this is the best thing I've done in
ages, but is it really worth a damn compared to X?" (X could be Micky
Spillane or it could be Homer. Choose your own demons.)
I'd like to think I'd winnow the "winners" by some emotional impulse which
is an infallible directive of the soul. But I'm a little bit agnostic
about such things. I think one is always entitled to have "personal
favorites," and maybe that should be the criterion for everything.
Somebody wants 25 photos? Well, I'll give you 100 of my personal favorites
and let you pick.
It seems like picking personal favorites, while not necessarily easy, is
still easier than anything else.
Joel W.
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