Photo Editing Struggle
I often struggle finalizing a monthly edit for my photo journal. I’m never quite sure what frames to pick and which to kick.
The first and second round of culling is quickly done, but really narrowing it down takes me quite a while. And it’s one reason I’m so far behind with posting there1.
The journal is not meant be a portfolio, and so I don’t really see the need nor do I want to only select the very best shots. But I’d like to select a somewhat tight selection that still communicates what that month was like.
And that’s really the bit I’m fighting with. While the target audience is primarily myself, I still want to display the photos in a way other people find it interesting, too. If only to make sure that I find the selection still interesting in a few years time. I don’t want to go through two hundred photos per month, but I don’t want to leave out things that I might miss later, either.
So, each month’s selection will probably always contain – and be allowed to contain – images that are nothing special, but where I feel they need to be in there to better tell the story. But it’s not easy for me to let go of certain photos. And I often procrastinate on the editing process, because I dread deciding which additional frames to remove from what I consider an already tight edit – which I know or feel it is actually not.
Maybe I should constraint myself to speed things up: simply stick to a fixed number of images – say a maximum of thirty photos per month – and work within that limit. But, what if I shot a lot of street and otherwise documentary photography and simply want to share more? Maybe put them somewhere else? Here? I really don’t know. Maybe “simply” get better at editing. But how?
Right after the reason, that I accumulated a lot of unprocessed rolls during last year’s travels, which I had to catch up developing and scanning. ↩︎