I have two holiday photographic rituals this time of year. I have begun one and will soon get to work on the other.

Today I began going through all of my raw files from 2010. I don’t even know how many thousands of files there must be, and it is perhaps better that I don’t know! Each time I do this year-end review I find a number of photographs with potential that I did not see right after I made them. Sometimes it simply takes a bit of distance in order to see what is there; other times I just moved on to another project before I was truly finished with the previous one. Don’t be surprised to see of these photographs posted here over the next few weeks.

Soon I’ll begin the second task, trying to pick my favorite photographs of 2010. I also enjoy this since the process lets me revisit and relive some of the experiences I had as I made the photographs. Given that I work from my “daily photograph” pool, it should be easier than reviewing the raw files – instead of thousands of files there are only a few hundred. However, it always turns out to be harder than I think it will be. I think there are perhaps two reasons. First, while most of the raw files are not really worth a second look, the photographs from which I select the “favorite of the year” images are all images that I like. This makes it very hard to narrow the selection down to perhaps ten or twelve photographs. Second, in some ways I am the least qualified to understand my photographs. That may sound odd, but no one else can see them in the same way that I do since I was there when they were made and thus know things about them that only I can know. Other viewers are perhaps better able to simply view them “as photographs.”

Regarding the second task, feel free to share your ideas and suggestions concerning the selection process or even to suggest specific photographs that might have connected with you.

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