Collecting and Comparing

There are days when I am inspired to photograph because I want to see new images on my computer screen that are my own. I can quickly get frustrated when I see that my better images were created weeks or months ago. I do not just want to take photographs, I want to come back with images I’ve produced by challenging the way that I see.

On one of those days, I found myself in Hollywood, near the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Street. It is a crazy location to photograph, largely due to the endless swarms of people, mostly tourists visiting this half-mile stretch of Los Angeles. It is home to the theater that hosts the Academy Awards, a portion of the Walk of Fame, and the theater that I still insist on calling Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, though it has been known by several names since.

Being in an area with an abundance of people is often a good thing for the kind of photography I practice. However, the density of people in this small area makes it especially difficult to produce well-ordered compositions. Even with good light and an interesting subject, there is so much busyness that the likelihood of distracting elements increases exponentially.

As I had done previously, I staked out the intersection, which featured a diagonal crosswalk. Designed as a safety measure for pedestrians, these crosswalks allow people to cross a street diagonally as well as traditionally. It stops all automobile traffic while people make their way across.

I gravitated to such an intersection because it allowed me to produce photographs where the street itself would not be cluttered with automobiles, especially those white vehicles that I often find distracting in a composition. Most importantly, I could use the painted lines on the street as a graphic element in my composition. Even better, I could stake a claim on the sidewalk and allow subjects to come to me and to enter the stage upon which I intended to compose a photograph.

This is exactly what unfolded when I saw this group of women and girls entering the intersection. They were on the tail end of a wave of people crossing the street. They moved slowly because they were all holding hands as they crossed, creating an interlocked group. I loved the tenderness exhibited by the gesture and I wanted to capture that in a photograph.

I wanted to use the crosswalk pattern on the ground as leading lines for the composition, so I positioned myself near the spot where the group would step up onto the curb. I looked through my viewfinder as they were midway across the street and made the choice to tilt the camera down slightly to eliminate distractions at the top of the frame. I included the feet of the people who had already crossed the street, but I did not want see waiting cars or signage in the background.

As the women and girls moved into place, I made a sequence of images, observing each individual as they moved through the scene. There were eight of them in all, and I got as many of them as possible to be cleanly read in the composition. Their hands were of particular importance to me.

By the time they arrived at the ideal position, I only had time to make two frames. I could not resist the temptation to review my camera’s LCD after I made the photographs. I needed to know that I had gotten the shot.

When I saw the image and realized that I had something special, I was both relieved and thrilled. I recognized that I had not only a good photograph, but a photograph that was much different than what I had created recently. It was a photograph that embodied the visual aesthetics I was always in pursuit of, but also revealed a moment of genuine human connection.

It became a benchmark image for me that year that I was always hoping to match or best. It was the kind of image that inspired me to get out as soon as possible to make more photographs.

Setting Goals

For years, I produced photographs for two primary reasons. The first was for the joy of making photographs. The second was to have images to illustrate the magazine articles and books I wrote. Both of these reasons provided me with the excuse to practice something I loved to do, but I did not give much consideration to the process beyond that.

I did have a desire to become a better photographer, but I did not think about how to quantify that. I might produce a truly exceptional image that I would sometimes use as the measuring stick for my improvement, but the reality was that I did not have a clear method for assessing my growth and development. Saying that I wanted to be better was not a clear enough goal.

One of my early goals was to become more adept at creating portraits of people. Though I had created street portraits of random strangers, I had little experience photographing a person for a formal portrait sitting. Rather than taking minutes to produce a portrait, I wanted to spend time with my subject and slowly draw them out for a more thoughtful and disciplined photograph.

The thought of this terrified me because although I had become adept at approaching strangers and producing photographs within a short period of time, I did not know how I would perform when I spent an hour with someone. Despite my fear, I knew I needed to do it.

So for a year, I solicited the help of friends and acquaintances to serve as my portrait subjects, often visiting them in their homes and studios to make their portraits. The aim was to create portraits in their personal environments using only available light. I wanted to use the sensibility I had practiced in the streets and bring it to my portrait sessions.

One of the photographs I made was of my friend Bill. We were attending a men’s retreat when I spotted some dappled window light shining against a wall. He happened to pass by and I asked him to pose for me. During the short session, I directed him and tried to engage him, hoping to elicit something genuine from him in that moment that we shared together. I knew the light and the setting was good, but I wanted to be intentional about what I aimed to capture about him in that moment.

I have found Bill to be very sensitive and vulnerable, and I wanted to reflect that in some way in the photograph. He is a handsome man, but I did not want to rely on just his physicality to carry the photograph. As we were engaged with each other, I produced a sequence of photographs, and finally settled on the image on the following page, which I thought captured his complexity.

The images I produced throughout that year were about more than just aesthetics; they were about the experience I created for myself and my sitter. I wanted the images to reflect our time together and I wanted to feel that I had created more than just a pretty picture. This was a high bar that I did not always meet, but it helped me to maintain focus on what I was trying to do. My progress was not just measured by the number of images I created, but also by the increased confidence I felt when it came to this kind of photography.

In later years, I set many goals for my photography, with the most recent revolving around becoming more adept at creating more layered compositions. It is something I admire in other photographers and I have worked hard to achieve in my own work with a mixture of success. But as I evaluate my images over the course of a year, I have a keen awareness of whether I am being dutiful with improving my work in that way or if I am just repeating myself.

Measuring Progress

Whether they produce photographs consistently or intermittently, a question that each photographer asks themselves is whether or not they are improving. Am I getting better? Do I have talent? Am I developing a personal style?

The answers to these questions are often difficult ones because we are so intimately connected to the photographs we make. While it may be reasonably easy to turn a dispassionate eye to the work of others, it is an altogether different matter when it comes to passing judgement on our own photographs.

Nevertheless, serving as our own critic is an invaluable skill that each photographer needs to develop. Otherwise, we are subject to the taste and opinions of others, which can vary wildly. You need look no further than the Internet to see how a photograph you posted can evoke feelings of approval, dislike, or indifference, which often differs from your own feelings and opinions. Other people’s opinions or comments can be helpful, but you as the photographer have to be the final arbiter of the photographs that represent who you are as an artist.

To do this, it is important to measure one’s progress over time. By that I do not mean counting how many frames you have produced in a given year, but rather conducting a thorough assessment of your technical skills and your personal vision. This can be an incredibly difficult thing to do, but with the principles you have learned with respect to the visual draws, I believe you can begin to assess both individual photographs and a body of work.

It is important to schedule regular intervals during which you evaluate the images you have recently produced. By using the ranking system described in the previous chapter, you have the beginnings of a process for measuring both the quantity and quality of the photographs you have produced.

Organizing Images for Evaluation

People view and organize their images on their computers in a wide variety of ways. Some deposit all the images into a single folder and use keywords to find images, while others use a detailed folder structure that can include many subfolders. I currently use a hybrid of the two, but largely to take advantage of a system that allows me to evaluate my images throughout the year.

I organize my images by year and include subfolders for each month. Within those monthly folders, I create subfolders that represent the assignment or type of photography I practiced. l use a person’s last name or the organization’s name for the folder. If it is personal work, I create a subfolder identified as street photography, personal, etc.

Soon after the images are imported into their respective folders, I go through the process of flagging and rating my images. As described in the previous chapter, I favor using a picked flag for my first culling pass. I then sort through those flagged images to further refine my choices and assign a single star, thus reducing the total number of images. By my second and third pass, I have compiled a tight selection of images from the various shoots.

By culling my images and applying ratings to my favored photographs, I begin the process of determining which images represent my better work. And while some of those images may be printed or posted on social media, the real measure of them comes when I evaluate these photographs at the end of each quarter and at the end of the year.

After each quarter, I look at the photographs that I have favored in the previous three months and further refine my choices to select the best images. I have developed a particular method for gathering those images to help remove much of the heavy lifting when it comes to organizing and sorting them.

Using Lightroom Smart Collections

I have created an automatic process using Adobe Lightroom’s smart collection feature to organize my images for evaluation. A smart collection is a collection of photographs that is compiled using metadata, keywords, and ratings. Rather than having to drag individual items into a collection, a smart collection does so automatically as I rank and rate images.

If you look in your Collections panel, you will see that Adobe has provided a few default smart collections in which images are collected because they have been flagged, rated with five stars, recently modified, or produced in the last month. You can also create new smart collections based on your own criteria. For example, I created a smart collection that is defined by images rated with two or more stars and a pick flag. Any image with these attributes will automatically be deposited into the designated smart collection.

The reason I find this automated process so helpful is that it is built on a process that I already practice when culling my images. I do not have to do additional work to organize these images; rather, it becomes a natural extension of what I am already doing. This is a big plus in my book.

Whatever criteria you use for creating smart collections is completely up to you. If you want to pull images that have three stars or higher, or have a particular color rating, or even those that possess particular keywords, you are at complete liberty to do so.

One of the ways I eliminate images that have been ingested previously is by creating smart folders for each year. This allows me to specify which folders are searched through when coming up with smart collections. This is especially important if, like me, you have tried a variety of rating systems throughout the years before settling on one. For example, I created a smart collection that collects photographs ingested into my 2018 folder, which have been rated with a pick flag and a single star.

I also created another folder where the criteria includes “has adjustments,” which means that the image has been processed or edited in some way. Though I normally add an additional star rating to those images that I have processed, I sometimes forget to do so, making more work for me later. In this way, it is an automated process that reduces the amount of work I have to do to organize my images.

If you desire, you can further refine the selections to images that have been assigned two stars or a color rating. This system is completely flexible, and you should feel free to refine it in any way that works for you.

Quarterly Assessment

At the end of each quarter, I go through the images I have collected in that year’s smart collection and begin to sort them. But before doing so, I select all the ranked images in that quarter and assign them a colored rating—e.g., green for first quarter, red for second quarter, etc. This helps me differentiate between the images that have been collected in that year’s smart collection by quarter.

I then create collections that represent the types of photography I normally practice, such as portraiture, urban landscape, travel, or abstract. These are normal collections, not smart collections. I will organize these collections in a collection set called 2018 Culling, and I will precede the name of each one with the given year. This makes it easier should I ever use a keyword search.

I will then go through the new ranked images produced in that quarter and place them into the appropriate folders—portraiture, street photography, etc. So rather than just having all my ranked images in a single collection, I have them gathered in collections with like images. I do this for a variety of reasons. First, it gives me a sense of the kinds of images I have produced throughout the year. These categories reflect how I arrange the portfolios on my website, and since I am hoping to update my website at the beginning of the new year, this helps me to get ahead of the game with that.

Organizing my images in this way also gives me insight into whether I am actually meeting personal goals to produce particular types of images throughout the year. If I intended to produce more environmental portraits this year, a quick look at my portrait folder gives me important feedback as to whether I am meeting that goal or not.

As I look through these images and compare them, I can get a sense of what I am doing in each respective category. I can ask myself questions like: Do all these images look pretty much the same? Am I trying to push myself with my use of light, color, or composition? Am I seeing anything that surprises me? Am I not producing enough of a particular type of photography that I have been aspiring to do?

Looking at these categories at the end of each quarter provides me with a lot of information regarding the kinds of images I have produced, as well as whether or not I have met the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year. I am often surprised midway through the year to see what I have been doing with respect to my photography. It can often light a fire beneath my butt to be more proactive about certain aspects of my work.

I will go through this process at the end of each quarter, giving me a solid foundation for assessing the best images of the year.

Selecting a Benchmark Image

After the year has ended, I will go through the images I have collected in these respective folders and further refine my ratings to determine which images will likely be included in my website update. To begin this process, I select a photograph in each folder that I describe as my benchmark image.

The benchmark image is the standout photograph, much like the anchor image used during the culling process. It is the image that I believe is the best photograph of its type that I have created and placed within this folder. It is the image against which all the other images will be compared. This is usually an easy thing for me to determine. Just looking through the thumbnails on my screen, I gravitate to the photograph that not only possesses almost all the visual draws to great effect, but that also resonates with me emotionally. I will assign that image another star rating. Depending on my culling process during the year, the benchmark image will have a total of two or three stars.

With my benchmark image selected, I will hit the C key on my computer to enter Lightroom’s Compare View. My selected image (the benchmark photograph) will be displayed on the left and the other images in the folder will be displayed on the right, one at a time. I press the left or right arrow key to cycle through the other images in the folder so that I can compare each one directly to my benchmark photograph.

This is where I have to ask myself a hard question: is the image on the right as good or better than my benchmark image? I have to be brutally honest in my response in order to narrow down my selection of images. If I were completely in love with everything that I photographed, I would never get anywhere. This is really where the rubber meets the road with respect to my editing chops.

If the image ranks equal to or better than my benchmark image, I assign it another star by clicking on the image and hitting the 3 key on my keyboard. Now I have another image that has been assigned three stars. I go through all the images in that category and hopefully I’m able to pare down my images from their initial count.

Once I’m done, I go back to the Grid View, click on Attributes in the Library Filter bar, and filter my selection to those images containing three or more stars. I then select all of those images and create a collection called something like Portrait_2ndPass, Street_2ndPass, or Personal_2ndPass. I will repeat this process for each collection in which I have gathered images throughout the year.

Normally when I do this, I can get the number of images down to about a dozen in each category for that year. If not, I go through the images again until I have narrowed them down to a dozen. After this, I will do a final pass to select what I call my core eight images.

The Core Eight

Through my years of editing my images and helping others build their portfolios, I have felt that it is essential to build a body of work around a selection of core images. Core images are photographs that are the best of the best and have no agenda other than being exceptional photographs. In terms of my own work, these are photographs that I believe best represent my skills, talent, and vision.

These are not photographs that are meant to reflect my ability to produce a particular type of photograph. I have not selected images based on proving that I can photograph a specific subject matter in a particular way. Instead, these are what I feel are the best photographs I have produced in an area of photography for which I have a passion.

When I have edited each category of images down to a core selection of eight, I have a real sense of what I have achieved or not achieved over the past 12 months, especially when I compare these images to the images from the previous year. Most importantly, I can evaluate what progress I made with respect to the creative goals I set for myself the year before.

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, I settled on eight photographs because I imagined sharing these images as a printed portfolio, which would include an opening image, a closing image, and three sets of photographs that face each other on printed two-page spreads. This is something that I can easily create using the Book module in Adobe Lightroom.

When I view the images in this way, I simulate the experience of looking at these core eight images as if they were in a printed portfolio or book. And unlike just looking at the images on the screen, this method of display creates a very different experience for me. There is something about seeing this collection as a printed book or portfolio that gives me a greater sense of how the photographs work individually and as a group. More often than not, I affirm my selection by viewing the images in this way.

Another advantage of having this core selection of eight images is that it provides a foundation on which to build. If I know that the eight selected images work strongly together, I can begin the process of editing more images, and quickly assess whether the images maintain their strength as a body of work or whether the strength of the group is diminished. I have seen many photographers’ portfolios weakened by the fact that they have some lackluster photographs mixed in with the great ones.

When it comes time to produce a printed monograph or portfolio, I create 4×6-inch prints of images that I have selected as my core eight, over multiple years. If my intent is to create a new portfolio of portrait images, I go through the process of culling by comparison, but this time physically handling the photographs, moving them around the floor or on a table. I find that this more visceral process of evaluating my images provides me insights that are just not possible when looking at a computer screen. I am frequently surprised by my choices and by how two images play off of each other during this process.

An Ever-Changing Process

The process that I have described in this chapter is constantly evolving and changing. However, its foundation has proven to be invaluable for measuring my progress as a photographer. It allows me to discern what images are my best, and also how I am progressing in terms of the way that I see and photograph.

I believe that if I did not make this a normal part of my creative process, I would simply produce a lot of photographs with no idea of what I was doing or where I was going. I might make some great photographs during the course of the year, but I would be left doubting whether I am growing and challenging myself in ways that are fruitful and fulfilling.

So whether you embrace this process as written or adapt some of it to your existing method of working, I encourage you to make any such process a part of your photographic experience. It will make all the difference in your ability to improve and fully enjoy your photography.