A reminder that my 2010 Favorites page is available – it includes some of my favorite photographs from 2010, compiled with the help of readers. (It seems like the first work day of the first work week of the new year would be a good time for one last post about this.
And now it is time to start work on the 2011 favorites…
Every December Jim M. Goldstein takes on the task of collecting the annual “best of” lists of many photographers. His project started modestly a few years back, picked up steam quickly… and I can only imagine the huge number of entries he is fielding this year! You can get more information about Jim’s project in a post at his blog. There is still time to put together your list and submit it.
My own “2010 Favorites” page is nearing completion, and I hope to post it later this evening. This year I tried something new – I invited readers to chime in with their feedback on my initial list of over 50 photographs. The response was wonderful and I’m very grateful to participants for their very kind words about my photography and for the time they took to look carefully through a much too large set of images and then post helpful lists and comments.
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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Happy New Year to everyone – and may this be a year of wonderful photography for you! (My 2009 Favorites are posted.)