The morning of the Tragically Hips show in Kingston, my friend, Paul and I met well before daylight to photograph the cigarette boats in the basin. Afterward, we took a stroll all around Market Square and the K Rock Centre area, just to see what was happening. The place was actually pretty busy with activity as the city crews were hanging banners of The Hip and people were setting up for the market as well. In the small street at the loading door of the K-Rock Centre, it was also buzzing with activity, not like other concerts, security people were already there and working, even though it was over 12 hours from showtime. As we made our way around to the front, we encountered a small group of people who had set up at the box office in hopes there would be tickets made available for the show. I have no idea if they released any or not, but those people were there, just in case. I thought this guy was quite interesting, he was resting in a most unusual place. If you look closely, you can see a person over near the box office who was taking pictures of me as I was photographing this man.
Photo of the Week #44
I have been pretty busy this past few days going to photographing concerts every night that I haven't had a bunch of time for my other stuff. This is a shot from last weekend's poker run. This was made early on the Saturday morning and as you can see, not all of the boats were even in the water yet. Always great to grab a shot with City Hall in the background too.
Photo of the Week #43
Last night, millions of fans across Canada tuned in to the last concert by The Tragically Hip. I tried to get credentials to shoot, but the promoter didn't allow anyone in to photograph. I debated about watching from Market Square, but opted to stay home and watch from there. The CBC did a wonderful job on the broadcast and The Hip didn't disappoint either. I've seen them many times over their career and last night was a fitting end to the story. It was emotional to say the least, saying goodbye to a band that has contributed to the soundtrack of most of our lives. What did it for me was when Gord said at the end of one of the encores, "Thank you and have a good life." Gord always seemed to know what to say to get to you.
Photo of the Week #42
This was made at Fort Henry back in 2008, but I still love it today. Reminds me that I should go back there and do some more stuff.
Learn To Cull
“Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.” – Ansel Adams
For those of you who don't know who Ansel Adams was, he was a very successful and highly significant landscape photographer based in California. He began his work in the 1920's and carried on to his death in 1984. He is widely considered to be one of the masters and a pioneer of post processing long before digital photography came about. The above quote came about when Ansel was questioned about his rate of productivity. He photographed primarily with large format film cameras, so it is obvious that he wasn't shooting the same volume as we do in the age of digital imagery, but the principle is still the same today, not every photograph we make is a "keeper".
I think that when we start out in photography, we are a little biased toward our own work and we tend to see a lot of what we do as much better than it really is. It takes a lot of time to develop our "eye" and learn what makes a good photograph. As we learn and practice, we begin to see things differently. We begin to be able to recognize the good images from the mediocre or, the true photographs from the snapshots. I used to spend all day shooting and when I looked at them on my computer, I would usually find that I only had a handful of photographs that I was truly happy with. I now realize that it's OK to not get dozens of "keepers" every single time I shoot, no one else does either. Learning to reduce clutter will make life a lot easier for yourself. We tend to have emotional attachments to our own photographs , but realistically, if a photograph isn't great now, it will not get better with age.......delete it.
The first step for me is a no-brainer. I make a pass through my new photographs and dump the obvious misfires, soft or blurry images or just images that I would not ever use. I then go through again, this time choosing from all the "similars" and only keep the couple that stand out. Another place where clutter can easily accumulate is when I shoot several images with the intent of creating a composite, such as when focus or exposure stacking. This gives me many images that I then use to create one single finished image in post processing. The frames I used to create that image are now useless to me, I get rid of them. The one place I am more conservative with my culling is with vacation or family photographs. Those are my memories and not so much for showing to others anyway.
As time goes by, I am getting better at culling, the emphasis is on quality, not quantity and that's how I deal with it. I have certain standards and keep only images that I feel are good. The bottom line is that our photograph folders get cluttered easily, just like our basements can. By working hard to reduce that clutter, I feel I am creating a catalog of much higher quality photographs that I can be proud of.