I’ve eliminated another 50 photographs from the running for inclusion in my “2012 Favorites” collection that I’m compiling for release sometime in the next week or so. It already hurts to pull some of them, but I still have way too many! Here is the current list of contenders:
I’d be happy to hear from anyone who has thoughts on this or who wants to suggest a favorite.
It has now become an annual ritual (obligation? ;-) to share a list of annual “best” or “favorite” photographs at about this time each year. I prefer to refer to them as my “favorites,” since it is very difficult to truly know which are “best.” Sometimes understanding that takes quite a while – photos that seemed amazing at first lose their magic and others that seemed less special grow on you.
So, how to do this? I exposed perhaps nearly 10,000 raw files last year. Most of those will never see the light of day. Of these, I was willing to share them at a rate of about one per day, though some will still be coming up here as “daily photos” for the first time in 2013. So I’m guessing that I might have 400 images to start out with. My target is a dozen photographs, but I’ve never distilled in quite to that point, and about 20 seems more likely.
My first step is to take all of the photos that I have shared online (or plan to share soon) that were made in 2012 and put them into a collection in Lightroom. I make a quick scan through these and start by generously giving anything that catches my eye a starting 3-star rating. That’s what I’ve done so far… and I have 119 photos!
The next step in the distillation process will be to go through those 119 photos and look for overlaps, images that I have a soft spot for but which don’t really work as well photographically, and photos to represent a certain diversity among the work I’ve done. I’ll share the results of that process here, too, once I complete it.
From that next selection, I’ll have the hard task of making the final cut.
If you have opinions about any of the photographs you’ve seen here this year, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
I just read the stunning and deeply disturbing story of the theft (not “merely” the all-to-common defacing) of a number of petroglyphs from a California location. (See “Petroglyph Thefts Near Bishop Stun Federal Authorities, Paiutes”) Apparently a group of depraved individuals hauled rock-cutting equipment to the site and sawed out the rocks holding several examples of native rock art, defacing and destroying other examples in the process. Anyone who has visited the better known examples of rock art is aware that a certain pathetic sub-group of the human race finds itself unable to resist the temptation to add their own “art” or deface that which is already there, but this incident represents a new low.
Photographers, those who operate photography workshops, and those of us who write about photography need to take this as an opportunity to think very carefully about how much information we should share about fragile places and things and about where and how we do our sharing. A few years ago I wrote about an occasion on which some friends and fellow photographers called me out on this (“Disclosing Photo Locations: How Much Information is Too Much?”), causing me to re-think how and what I write about my photographs and the places where I make them.
Here is the problem, more or less. “Back in the day,” we might well share what we knew about certain places and subjects without much care at all. While we certainly would not blabber about fragile places in front of people who we thought might disrespect or even damage them, we had no qualms about sharing information with trusted friends. And, in fact, the dangers of that kind of sharing in the pre-web world were not really all that great. The word-of-mouth sharing reached very small number of people, and it was unlikely (though not quite impossible) that the information would eventually get to “the bad guys.” We could even argue that we were serving a greater good by sharing this knowledge with others who should know, and whose voices might contribute to the protection of these places and subjects.
However the web has changed everything. Anything that you or I post today becomes cataloged, is searchable, is readily shared and re-shared, becomes linked to other pieces of information about the same subjects… and can be seen by millions of people you don’t know, among them many whom you would not trust and some that you would never share this stuff with. That’s the new reality. Among the people who may see our work and read our descriptions online are thoughtless barbarians who stand on top of fragile arches, who climb on tufa towers, who inscribe their own “art” into ancient sites, who drive all over the landscape, who remove “sailing rocks” from their playa homes, who leave trash in the landscape, who create trails across wilderness landscapes, who harm wildlife, who party in sacred and quiet places, and more.
As photographers who share our work and write about it and even take other people to these places, we have a responsibility to our subjects to do everything we can to protect them, even if this means restricting what we say, what we share, and where we share it.
Using photographs of rock art as an example, I think that responsible photographers should adopt the following policies:
Our work to photograph these subjects and the photographs that result from this work should be evidence of our recognition of the importance of these places and of protecting them – and not something that will contribute to endangering them.
Update: A few months later the petroglyphs were recovered. Final outcome in the case is not known as of this writing.
(From time to time I re-post stuff that I wrote elsewhere, including things from various photography forums. This is one of those posts. While I do believe it using good and appropriate photographic equipment, I do not believe in “magical gear,” whether lenses or cameras or whatever. Gear is important, but only insofar as it actually affects your ability to produce the photographs that you are working on. This particular – and lengthy! – comment was a response to a common response to those of us who don’t believe in magical gear, namely to suggest that because we don’t use it we must not understand. Enjoy!)
G Dan – just one question Have you ever shot a Leica or Contax lens on your Canon Body?”
That dismissive come-back doesn’t work, despite the fact that such a reply is often offered as if it should stop discussion in its tracks.
So, no, I have not. There are many things I have not done, however, that I don’t do because facts don’t support the wisdom of doing them, or because facts do support the wisdom of doing something else. Let me give you a photographic example. I have chosen certain specific lenses for my photography. In the process of making those decisions I investigated and considered many other lens options, almost all without actually trying them, and came to logical and intelligent decisions that led me to choose something else.
The argument that people can only have opinions about things they have actually “used” is, on its face, simply nonsense. It also is an absurdly impractical concept. I’d be willing to bet that those who offer up this gem of an argument do not follow it in the rest of your lives. For example, you might be able to offer an opinion about various political systems or countries and whether you would prefer to live in them or not, but you would be a very unusual person if you had actually lived in all of them about which you have an opinion. I’ll bet that when you purchase a car, you do not try all of the options that you dismiss before deciding that you are uninterested in them. You might admit to knowing things about places you have never visited or about which you have not made direct observations yourself. (It is cold in Antarctica. There is no oxygen on the moon. When it is night where you are, it is day on the opposite side of the planet.) Continue reading “Have you ever shot a Leica or Contax lens on your Canon Body?”