Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/04/23

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Subject: RE: [Leica] OT - National Geographic film usage
From: "Kit McChesney | acmefoto" <kitmc@acmefoto.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 11:09:41 -0600

Well, that's why I used the word "success" in quotes, because I was quoting
someone else's words who made the first post. "Success" is relative. There
are many different ways to make photographs, and many styles of shooting,
and many different measures of what makes a photograph a "good" image.
Everyone who uses a camera is not shooting an assignment for National
Geographic.

Process differs and motives vary. Just like writing. Some write articles for
magazines, others write novels, or poetry. There are many different
sensibilities at work. Some photographers show their work only in an art
gallery, whereas others are shooting for magazine or newspaper assignments.
Even though I wanted desperately as a teenager to work for National
Geographic, and begged the editors to tell me exactly what to study in
college so that I could "travel the world and make pictures," these days
most of the work I see in the National Geo is not the kind of image I am
interested in making, though I do enjoy their work very much. But I prefer
the kind of images that Paolo Pellegrin or Ilkka Uimonenn or Mary Ellen Mark
are creating, or the work of Sally Mann, work that's edgy and daring, and
less likely to be seen in the mainstream. I doubt if Sally Mann shoots 1200
4x5's or 8x10's! And she creates some amazing work. But it's a different
aesthetic.

Kit


- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of J. Gilbert
Plantinga
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 10:26 AM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: Re: [Leica] OT - National Geographic film usage


Define "success."

I recently edited a portfolio from my past two years work. I started
with just under 900 rolls of film, about 32,000 pictures and ended with
41 pictures. However, I generally figure my "hit rate" to be about one
shot every three rolls or about 1%. But one has to consider the editing
process. I edited my 32 thousand pictures as I went along so that when
I sat down to do the first cut I was only working with about 3 thousand
frames. Then from those I selected about 300 that I scanned and made
into work prints. From those I was able to (with my editor's help) pick
41 that worked together as a portfolio.

But the most interesting thing is that when I'm making that first rough
cut - the 1% - some of the shots are isolated one-off pictures of
fleeting subjects, but many of them are one frame out of 5 or one frame
out of 25 or more of the same scene that I had the time or opportunity
to work over in many different ways. And there are static subjects that
I have to return to over days, weeks, or even years, before I feel that
I nailed it just right. I wouldn't work a scene over and over if I
didn't know that I already had one pretty good picture. Getting back to
those one-off, opportunistic photographs, I believe that experience
gives me the advantage, weighs the odds in favor of my success, and the
cost of experience is film. I don't think it's possible to waste film,
or if it is possible it must take great effort!

Gilbert

On Wednesday, April 23, 2003, at 11:41  AM, Kit McChesney | acmefoto
wrote:

> So take heart. Your "success" rate could and should be better than
> 0.05%. If
> not, something is terribly wrong.
>
> I would also venture to say that if it takes 20,000 shots per story,
> someone
> is wasting lots of film, and maybe the photographers aren't that good
> after
> all. I'm sure if I took 20,000 shots (and I don't consider myself a
> half-bad
> photographer) I could get five or six pictures, or even a dozen (most
> National Geographic stories don't have much more than that) that would
> pass
> muster for just about any publication! Even National Geographic!

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