In the pouring rain, I saw the children coming home from school. The photos taken in the early stage are not brilliant, but after the editing and cutting in the later stage, the final result is this work.
The art of editing is daunting and challenging for any photographer, and it's just as important as shooting. If edited improperly, no one will know how good the photos we take are. A lot of shooting means that it will bring you better work, and it will undoubtedly increase the difficulty of editing, but it is a good thing. Often, the more good work you shoot, the more difficult it is to edit. You'll have a hard time choosing and wavering in so many wonderful photos. A good photographer will do every shot to the extreme, and a good editor means that he can choose the best of the best.
To be clear, when I talk about editing, I don't mean post-production of photos, although the two are closely linked. No matter what post-editing software you use to process your images, you need to continuously improve your post-processing capabilities to make your images better. By editing I mean picking your best work.
Editing your own work objectively is not easy, because it is so close to you that it is "the authorities are fans". When you look at the objective data on these files, and attach your sentiment value, it makes it impossible for you to be an absolutely objective and ruthless editor. What do you do if you want to be so close to your work and be the best editor of your own work?
The late Street Photographer Gary Winorgland, who died of cancer at the age of 56, left a lot of unfinished work, including 2,500 rolls of undeveloped 35mm film (36 per roll, mostly Kodak tri-x black and white films), 6,500 rolls of film that had been rinsed but had not yet corrected exposure prints, and 3,000 unedited photographs, and thousands of unedited photographs!
The negatives could not be edited only because of his premature death, and he never seemed to rush to edit his work, as if deliberately waiting until the memories of those shots vanished. In an op-ed by Frank Van Riper published in the "Photographs" section of the Washington Post's official website, Gary Winorgland was quoted as saying:
"I tell my students in class that if I'm in a good mood when I'm shooting one day, I'll rinse the film immediately because it's so wonderful to shoot. After that, I will let the film have a sedimentation process, so that it is easier to judge the positive film and the print in a more objective manner. ”
When editing, you must pay attention to subtle details that enhance the effect of your photos. In this photo, the dancers' postures are synchronized, and most of their raised hands are in the white background area, making the picture intriguing and better.
Wildlife photographer Tom Mangleson often waits a while to see his work. He said that some of my colleagues have to look at the effect on the display every time they take a photo; and many times I look at it after taking all the pictures, maybe every day or two, or maybe every month. It's no exaggeration to say that I have about 15,000 negatives that I've never seen before, and more than 250,000 digital photos that I haven't seen. Personal feelings and psychological effects aside, this approach is beneficial for viewing and editing images taken by oneself. For me, the most important part of photography is the experience of shooting on location, which goes beyond the desire for photo playback and editing. I often think that when it rains, or when I break my leg and get sick, I have time to read all the books on the shelves and edit all the photos.
Today's digital photography allows us to truly feel the amazing clarity of the image, which is clear between pixels and frames, especially the moment of eyebrow communication. In the past, photographers had to open their eyes and examine prints with a magnifying glass, but now they can freely compare and watch on a computer screen, and we have no reason to miss our best works. No one is perfect, and you can still make mistakes when editing photos, so you should be extra careful when deleting image files. I have always disapproved of deleting photos on the spot, not to mention that there are high-quality memory cards and hard disks on the market today, and there is no reason to do so. I don't even like to watch the replays on the monitor while shooting, let alone delete photos, I enjoy and focus on shooting on the spot.
Like Winorgland and Mangerson, many photographers wait until the work has "settled" before editing, and the passage of time blurs their memories of the scene and replaces them with a more calm and objective attitude.
Try to revisit the work of the past, such an editor will be thought-provoking, and as you progress and mature, your "editorial vision" will continue to grow. As you look back, you'll find the forgotten, buried pearls that, for whatever reason, failed to get into your "eyes" in previous edits.
Image excerpt from
Author: Steve Simon
Translator: Wang Zhen, Liu Hang
Next edition: February 2021 1st edition
Price: 89.00 RMB
The author of this book is the British documentary photographer Steve Simon, and the author will teach readers the 10 secrets of making wonderful works with his own practical experience and personal experience. Through the reading of this book, you can help you explore personal shooting projects to stimulate your creativity, let you stand out, here are easy to get started method suggestions, there is a lifetime of real shooting experience and summary, enough for you to gaze at the fiery gaze of the deep attention of the emotion, aim at the gripping image, "photograph" the thousands of styles in your eyes.
Original title: "After the works are precipitated, then edit"