Last Indian Portrait
I’m almost done with working on my Indian portraits.
One of the biggest snags for me is knowing when to stop.
I have around 99 rolls of film, and it’s quite an endeavor going through each contact sheet, often revisiting the same contact sheet – just to check that I’ve not overlooked some golden nugget. Some image that will add strength to the final collection. I’m sure there will be one or two that will get away from me.
A few years down the line I’ll stumble upon my films from India and revist them, only to sit in wonder as to why certain images were omitted. It’s just the way of things.
Distance allows us time to be more objective about our work.
So here is a quick contact sheet of the images I propose to put into my india portfolio. It could change. It may stay the same. I may find some more images or decided to halt work for a week or so only to come back to it all with fresh eyes and decide there are much more images i want to include.
I took a lot of shots of Prayer objects while in India, and one of the thoughts that I’m having right now is to create a seperate portfolio of these ’strange objects’.
Perhaps I sound unsure of what I’m doing, perhaps you think I’m just playing around. I think it’s neither. It’s just part of the creative process. I like to visualise my images while I’m out there shooting, but it doesn’t stop at that point. It continues when I get home and start to slowly build up the collection of images into an entity that has its own personality or character. I’m never sure just where the creative process is taking me and that’s always exciting.
Then there are the images which I feel don’t fit into any category. They’re memorable to me though, because they remind me of just how strange a place India is compared to my home land of Scotland.
Hi Bruce, I’m interested in your take on realistic expectations for “keepers”, as I tend to be hypercritical of my own work. You shot 99 rolls, but put only 43 images in your India Portfolio, maybe 1%. Presumably these are the ones that most met your standards for excellence.
I heard Rick Sammons say if he came back from a travel shoot with 10-12 really good images he was happy.
Scott Kelby wrote recently that if he got one
“wall hanger” out out 240 shots he’d be thrilled, (less than 1%).
All that makes me feel better. Should it? Are we like pearl divers, acknowledging that most of what we bring up will not be what we were looking for?
Comment by Sam Blair — 8 August, 2009 @ 8:07 pm
Hi Sam,
I’ve covered this previously when I published my Bolivian portfolio. If you have a look under the Bolivian tag, there should be a contact sheet and a description of my work flow.
But to say it quickly – I shoot a lot, I’m not sloppy, each image is taken because I ‘felt’ something. I just have very high standards and I’m not prepared to let images out that are good, but could have been better. I also have to think about the medium also. People have short attention spans on the web, so if I published 80 images of India, folk would get bored before they’d got half way through….. I still feel 40 images from India is too much for people to digest in one sitting, so I’m probably going to be ruthless and whittle it down to an even smaller number.
My hit rate when I shoot is quite good. I’d say for every roll of film, I get around 4 good images. Every 10 rolls of film, I get one or two really-good shots. But I’ve been shooting a lot of images for a while, and I know my own style and what works for me. I also know what I want. Many don’t. A lot of people out there are casual shooters. Some aren’t sure what they like to shoot. I’m rather specific. I’m a landscape and travel/portraiture photographer. There’s a certain look I’m after.
Perl diving suggests that photography is a bit of a pot-luck endeavor. It certainly starts that way for us all, but as time, technique and talent are grown, it should become less so. I feel it’s more like a game of golf perhaps. Some days I just nail it and I’m consistent. Other days I find that I just don’t seem to be able to pull off what I was wanting to achieve. Then there are those shots that I get back from the lab and I stare at them because they have exceeded my expectations…. something happened and I’m not sure what it was I did, or how to recapture it, to keep the quality up so high.
Comment by Bruce Percy — 8 August, 2009 @ 11:59 pm
Hi Sam,
There were a few more points in your post that I’d like to discuss.
You say you feel you may be hypercritical of your own work. I haven’t seen your work yet, but there’s nothing wrong in having a high degree of quality-control. But I think some of us are just never happy with what we do, so maybe you suffer from giving yourself a hard time. I don’t know as I haven’t seen your work.
The other aspect is that if you haven’t developed your own style or ‘voice’, then it’s all too easy to compare your work with that of others and think it’s not good enough, when in fact, it’s just not the same. It never will be. You shoot Sam images, Steve McCurry shoots Steve McCurry images.
If your expectations are high because you are judging your own imagery by comparing it to someone elses work – then don’t.
But if you feel, know deep down inside that a particular image doesn’t work, and you’re being objective about it – then believe that and just accept that this is your ’standard’.
I’m not too critical of my own work. I feel I’m able to distance myself from my work very quickly, and for that, I’m able to be objective. If an image sucks, I soon forget about it and cast it out. If an image was so close to working for me, but there’s something still unsettling about it – that too gets thrown out too. I’ve set my own standard and I just have to accept that I can’t afford to be too precious about what I do. Some days I’ll lose, some days I’ll win.
Comment by Bruce Percy — 9 August, 2009 @ 12:27 am
Bruce, Thanks for the input, and good thoughts. The Bolivian discussion was also helpful.
I’m intriqued by the fact that you still get images back that at times exceed your expectations because “something happened and I’m not sure what I did or how to recapture it”.
Perhaps I’m being too cerebral about it,(the curse of a trial lawyer) but it’s that spark, that rare combustion from the entire creative process that fascinates me. Maybe it’s when an image crosses the line from craft to art. Michelangelo said he would see an image within a block of marble, and then it was just a matter of chipping off the fragments that were not part of the visualized image. The visualization and the end product were matched exactly.
How do you achieve that in photography more often? What makes it happen? If those questions were easily answered, then we would all be Michelangelos, eh? But still, the endless search for answers is necessary, I think, to effectively communicate visually whatever the scene evoked within us.
Again, learning the way you do it is very helpful, so thanks again.
Comment by Sam Blair — 9 August, 2009 @ 6:44 pm
Hi Sam,
All I can say is – it’s art, and therefore is highly subjective. For instance, I find that some of my personal favourite images are not what others prefer. So I’m often surprised that images I felt were ‘good, but not my best’ are considered very highly by others.
I can’t analyze it too much, even though I’m terrible at over-analyzing most things in my life, such as relationships for example. I guess being an arty person since a Kid, I just go with what feels right at the time and I’ve learned to not look back too much. Sometimes I find my work wasn’t as satisfactory as I thought it was, but that’s perhaps the sign of me moving on, or changing.
It would be folly of me to suggest that there is one photographer out there who knows exactly what he’s getting when he presses the shutter. If you find one – he’s lying, or is deceiving himself and you too.
Perhaps your analogy of diving for perls is right. I’m don’t really know – I find it hard often to put into words the why’s and hows. All I can do is explain how I was feeling, why I made the decision I made for each photo, and show others how I do what I do. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way. But more often, I do feel that photography is 95% emotional art, and 5% technical. I don’t get the gear-head mentality at all.
Comment by Bruce Percy — 9 August, 2009 @ 7:00 pm