You need to be ruthless as an editor. Ruthless. As Ira Glass points out, sometimes taking something out from the edit is the hardest part.
“When you look at the footage, you know there’s a feel-ing you had about it, which isn’t in the footage. Then it’s time to be the ambitious, super achieving person who you’re going to be and kill it. It’s time to kill and it’s time to enjoy the killing because by killing you will make something else even better live. You have to be 176 The PAssionATe PhoTogrAPher
mAkInG THInGS BeTTer
The editing process can teach you much about how you shoot and suggest how to make things better.
Post-edit, I make mental notes if I’m disappointed or if I notice something I neglected to get. In other words, I try to learn from each and every shooting experience.
What did I miss? Did I perform my Ten-Step duties to the best of my ability by moving around enough, shooting enough, and varying my angles and distances from the subject? There are lots of
7.9 it’s not always about technical perfection. When a woman protester at the republican Convention in new York City is subdued by security, the movement in the frame adds to the urgency of the moment. © steve simon
important answers to questions about the way you shoot that can be gleaned during editing (7.10–7.18).
And when it’s possible, it has been my experi-ence that going back for a second or even third reshoot can teach you much and yield spectacular results. You can move past your visual frustrations by learning from your mistakes and correcting them.
There is no shame in admitting your bar is raised very high. Let your subjects know what it is you are after, or what you want to try again. They will often
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7.10–7.18 editing is a good place to keep tabs on your process. in this situation, i shot a little more than i normally do, mainly because the light was low and there was a lot going on that was out of my control. i often use the digital “contact sheet” as a way to ensure that i’m taking my own advice from step 3—moving around and trying new things. The last frame shown here was the final select, where the gesture of touch made this image stronger than the others. it took a lot of frames to get there. Mamello Mokholokoe runs Phelisanong, a community-based project to rehabilitate, educate, and train disabled children and youth (www.phelisanong.com). © steve simon
frame 1 frame 15 frame 22 frame 45
frame 66 frame 91 frame 112 frame 124
frame 139 178 The PAssionATe PhoTogrAPher
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extraor-dinary effort you are taking to get the best possible images.
After a thorough edit, and after selections are made, I then determine what needs to be done to enhance them further, bringing out the best of every image in post-processing.
The editing process is always on. From the moment we head out with our camera it starts.
You’re looking for things visual, editing out the things you don’t want to photograph. In some ways the act of shooting is most concerned with editing out what we don’t want in the frame. I know many nature photographers who start with a subject that interests them, then move in and around— scanning the entire frame, slowly excluding distracting ele-ments until they reach their final composition.
Cropping is a second chance to make things right (7.19 and 7.20).
Generally, I like to compose and crop in camera.
I like the challenge of living within the shape of the frame. Depending on the final destination of the images, if I do crop I prefer to maintain the master aspect ratio so the shape and dimensions of the pho-tos stay the same, particularly when hanging a series of images on a wall, or when displaying a body of work on my website or in a book. But that’s me, and it’s a personal choice for all photographers.
Post-processing can have a big effect on composi-tion and how that image is perceived by the viewer.
Enhancing the image by dodging and burning and correcting color allows me to play down distractions and lead the viewer’s eye to important elements within the frame. These steps bring out the very best in your work. I tend to be a minimalist when it comes to enhancing my images. I like to make the best digital capture possible for my RAW file, and then process my images for maximum visual impact without overdoing things. I’d rather be out shooting than in front of my computer, but I will never let an image out into the world unless I’ve brought out the best in it through post-processing.
7.19 and 7.20 i didn’t have time to get and use the lens i needed, but because i shot at a low iso of 200, i was able to crop this shot while maintaining the master aspect ratio to pull out one of my favorite images from the frame. i thought the original was too centrally weighted, so i cropped to move the women to the right of the frame, bringing them closer while keeping the master aspect ratio of the original. i hated to lose the sky up top, but it’s a compromise i made to keep the shape of the photo consistent with all my work. © steve simon
I said earlier that it’s sometimes difficult to be the best editor of your own work because you’re so close to it. At the same time, nobody cares more about your work than you do and, ultimately, you take final responsibility for it.
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For me, following the Ten Steps means working every image, every session, and then ruthlessly edit-ing it down to the very best. I can then look at the selects from one shoot and add them to my master selects for the entire project.
Working on a project, the editing process tells you what you have but, more importantly, it tells you what you don’t have. It is at this stage where
“holes” or weaknesses become evident and, once identified, you can fill them in and strengthen the entire body of work. If you’re working on your own personal project, it’s good to have interim deadlines or goals, but the editing process will tell you when you’ve got enough for the work to feel complete and be published.
I had an opportunity to do another photo book from work I was doing on the HIV/AIDS pandemic in some of the sub-Saharan countries I had been to.
It was a great opportunity, so I put together what I had done to that point, and took my critical editor’s eye to the work as a whole to determine how I could put them together as a book.
edITInG wITH purpoSe
How you edit will also be determined by the pur-pose and final outcome of what you are editing for.
You are going to choose differently depending on how the photos will be used—whether for a book, a slideshow, an exhibition, a museum curator, or your mom.
I can’t remember where I heard the idea that projects never really end; they are just abandoned.
It’s true to a certain extent. If you passionately pur-sue a subject, you may reach an end stage where you exhibit and publish the work, but it doesn’t mean you stop shooting that subject.
I worked on a project called “Healing Waters: The Pilgrimage to Lac Ste. Anne,” where for one week in the year, people travel to Alberta, Canada, and gather at a small lake that is said to have healing powers. I photographed this event and was inspired to go back. I edited the work and eventually decided to create a book, so I kept going back for more (7.21 and 7.22). Once the book was published, I still kept shooting, year after year, and who knows? Maybe someday I’ll do a sequel to the book.
7.21 and 7.22 my experience photographing at Lac Ste. Anne was wonderful. people welcomed me and my camera into their private moments of faith. when the project was published, I kept coming back. © Steve Simon
180 THe pASSIonATe pHoToGrApHer
I had distinct goals for the project. I wanted to show through my photographs the powerful nega-tive effect the scourge of AIDS has had on the people I encountered and the lives I observed. But I also wanted to show that, despite the devastation, life was going on and the people I encountered were often resilient and inspiring.
It was a tall order to fill, but knowing what I needed made me realize that I didn’t have enough images to tell that story. I identified areas of the project that needed to be worked on to achieve my goals, creating a laundry list of sorts to give me the direction I needed when I went back to complete the project (7.23 and 7.24). This too is editing.
My project “America at the Edge” is one that has no deadline, so I keep shooting for it and someday
7.23 and 7.24 editing told me not only what i had, but more importantly what i needed to get. i returned to Africa to work on my project with a mission gleaned through careful editing. i needed to illustrate the fact that so many people were dying because of the scourge of hiV/Aids without being dramatically graphic like i had been in other work. so i hung around the cemetery.
© steve simon
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GeT A SeCond opInIon
Getting quality feedback on your work is very important but not always easy to do. Finding people who can articulate their critique of your images in a way that you can understand and use to learn, grow, and improve your work is essential to your develop-ment as a photographer (7.25).
Seek out respected opinions to learn how to make things better. I’ll talk more about resources like online sites and camera clubs in Step 10, but gener-ally it has been my experience that showing your work around and asking questions will help. We all want to hear good things in response to our work, but as great as positive feedback feels, I would much prefer constructive criticism that I can learn from, which helps me become a better photographer.
I hope to have it published as a book. In the mean-time, I keep adding to the work, and it’s one of sev-eral projects I always have going at any one time.
When you’re editing your project, it sometimes helps if you have a clear understanding of what your goals are for the work (I’ll talk more about this in Step 9). Simply having a good title for a project can help focus your editing efforts, making it easier to cut images that just don’t reinforce that title. If the project is called Dogs and you have an image of a cat, then save it for the cat project. Simplistic example, but you get the picture.
7.25 A second opinion is always a good idea. i seek out constructive feedback from all sources and it has made a big positive impact on my growth as a photographer.
A hearse is parked in a driveway in east detroit. from the “America at the edge” series. © steve simon 182 The PAssionATe PhoTogrAPher
ptg6934589 he spent time editing and living with the work, the
project revealed itself to Mr. Frank in 83 images.
The editing process literally takes as long as the shooting process did, and often longer in order to do it right. You need to live with the work for a while, like Mr. Frank did, and in my experience it helped to get outside opinions. But ultimately, it is you who has to take responsibility for the final outcome, and you need to feel satisfied that you’ve done your best job of it.
Always the first and most important consideration when editing is to make sure the best images are identified and marked. But the ultimate selection depends on how the images are being used. For long-term projects, you often need to use more than one image, and your choice of one image might influ-ence your next selection. When choosing several images, you usually want every image to say some-thing new about the story or message you are trying to communicate—unless repetition is being used as a visual device to make a point. Sometimes images fit together intellectually, yet they’re not a visual fit.
Sequencing can be complex or simple, but it should be effective. A chronological order is a good start, but often the story can gain or lose momen-tum with the sequence, so spending time and thought on sequencing can, as with editing, make or break your project (7.26 and 7.27).
If you can put the work away for a while and let it percolate, then come back with fresher eyes, it will confirm earlier decisions or maybe reveal omissions you didn’t see the first time around.
Robert Frank spent a year mulling over his sequence for “The Americans.” There were no spe-cific chapters but each of the four sections examined an aspect of American culture, with an American flag at the start of each section. He told students that his biggest challenge was the selection and elimination of prints.
To cull down to the eventual 83 images in the book, he made 1,000 work prints that he would separate by category: race, religion, politics, the media, etc. He then stapled prints to the walls or spread them around his apartment floor, gradually eliminating weak or too obvious images, or ones that didn’t fit the theme and story he was telling.
The sequencing in “The Americans” is very deliberate; when you start with almost 25,000 images, you can understand how crucial editing and sequencing are to the final outcome. Many differ-ent books could have been produced, but because
7.26 and 7.27 sequencing is an art unto itself and should be given enough care and consideration because of the powerful effect it has on what your set of pictures ultimately communicates. it helps to have a respected set of eyes assist you and to take some time for your thoughts to percolate before locking in a sequence. © steve simon
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ptg6934589 In the creative picture-taking process, the choices
you make are often intuitive, but they come from experience. As we develop our critical thinking skills, it gets easier to articulate our feelings about photo-graphs and understand what others are saying about our work. It helps us to ask questions for a clearer understanding as to how we can improve.
poST InSpIrATIon
I preach the gospel of programs like Aperture and Lightroom, which speed up your workflow and learning curve, giving you more time to shoot.
They organize your photographic life, getting rid of duplicates and general digital clutter while help-ing you recognize connections and patterns in your work, revealing themes to be expanded upon and new projects to be pursued (7.28–7.31). I can use the software to play with sizes and order as I look for a narrative, or I can print them as an essay. When I’m ready, I can create a web page and email trusted mentors for advice. Or even put a book together to take around to show people.
Sometimes visual elements are used to connect one image to another; other times it is the content itself. The final destination for your story will also help determine its content and sequence. Pictures on a page would differ from an essay to be exhibited in a gallery or as part of a multimedia presentation.
In a magazine or newspaper stories, thought must be given to the size of the pictures. Some pho-tographs work well big or small; others need to be run a certain size to best communicate subtle yet important details. Tight and simple compositions often read well small, but they can also gain impact when printed large.
It’s hard to get it right every time because there are a nearly infinite number of images we can make.
The possibilities of a scene—including or exclud-ing elements—are virtually unlimited durexclud-ing the in-camera as well as the post-processing stages. It helps to take a critical look at your work and think of how to make it better. Having a second set of eyes that can articulate and constructively criticize how images can be improved can make a huge difference.
7.28–7.31 The kissing couples were all taken at different times in different places, while shooting unrelated subjects. But I can now create a “kissing” album and drag all my similar pictures inside it. I can play with them, move them around, see how they work together, and watch the project evolve, inspiring me and helping me “see” more of these images when I’m out in the world.
©Steve Simon
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the space that new files in Photoshop would add. I can experiment with endless ideas, grouping pho-tos into albums, which blossom into full-fledged projects. When I’m out on a shoot and I see a good picture unrelated to my current assignment, I shoot it, and there is a place for it or I make a new place;
it doesn’t get filed away and forgotten, and this has been a revelation for me that has made me a stron-ger photographer.
I’ve been shooting for so long now that I begin to see similarities in photographs I take, even if they are continents or decades apart. It may be that a similarity in the composition, or the light, or a ges-ture. Or maybe the subject matter is similar—shapes, faces, or emotions evoked. Regardless, I sometimes get curious to see how images will play together, and from there, ideas and new bodies of work are born.
Since these programs create previews instead of whole digital copies when you duplicate them like this, hundreds or even thousands of versions can
ACTIon: The Art of the edit: Second Time Around The whole idea of the innocence of vision is
something i strive for when i shoot, and it involves unlearning the formulary patterns i repeat while shooting on a regular basis.
it’s interesting to go back and look at some of your early work, which may not repre-sent the technical competence you now have as a photographer—but to see what it was you were drawn to and your approach to photography when you were just getting started.
This is an editing exercise that is designed to have you take stock of where you are now in your photographic journey, and move for-ward, faster, with confidence and direction.
We’ve talked about how life experience can affect your photographic vision and the ideas expressed through your work.
go back and do a fresh edit and organiza-tion of your archive.
i realize that for some people this is a tall order. But the sooner you start and schedule
i realize that for some people this is a tall order. But the sooner you start and schedule