[Leica] Bicycle project off the ground

[philippe.orlent at pandora.be (Philippe Orlent)]

Hi Nathan,

Ask to edit the selection to different people, and you will get a different
selection, unless you determine clear criteria of selection. And even
then...

But this is how I do it when I have to edit a big series of images:
basically it's about doing the selection in different rounds after
determining what is the goal of the selection.

If the goal is: making a series about bicycles, I'd immediately toss those
where the subject isn't the bicycle itself. There are quite a few of those
(more city/landscape than bicycle).

You'd also have to determine how much pictures you'd want to keep in the
end. I'd say: go for the 10 best ones.

First round: I go through them pretty quickly. What immediately "sticks" to
my eye stays, the others are out. This is almost only based on pure
intuiton. (which after years becomes a combination of intuition, instinct
and experience)

So these are those that stick to my eye (for different reasons):
2,5,9,14,20,21,28,47,60,65,71,89,91,92,94,106,109,115,117,120,122,123,124,12
5

Next round would be getting the "doubles" out. In this case I'd choose the
best one out of those with "do not park bicycles here".

Next round would be looking for those with post-processing potential and for
those that are on the spot.

Then I would do the PS work on the post-processing potentials: cropping, B&W
or color, levels etc. So the digital darkroom work. Personally I go even
further and do retouching on the photos: sometimes a detail distrubs the
whole, and I do not hesitate to take those details out.

Then I would trim down to the best 10.

Finally a last round of finetuning to make it a strong series.

Since this is an ongoing project, I'd do this monthly, and at the end of the
year another round of selection of the 12 x 10 chosen ones. If you keep
1/4th of them, you will have a fantastic series after 1 year.

And I'd keep the unselected ones, too, to have a look at them from time to
time: sometimes you overlook one that has to come back in the selection.

---

> From: Nathan Wajsman <nathan.wajsman@planet.nl>
> Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug@leica-users.org>
> Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 00:33:10 +0200
> To: LEG <leica@freelists.org>, Leica Users Group <lug@leica-users.org>
> Subject: [Leica] Bicycle project off the ground
> 
> I mentioned some time ago that I had embarked on a project to photograph
> the enormous variety of bicycles and their owners in this country. I
> have taken about 150 such pictures during the past month, and edited
> them a bit. In addition, I have some older ones from Switzerland and a
> couple of other places. I have now put 129 of them in a gallery. This is
> very much a work in progress, particularly as regards editing. But I
> would be grateful if people took a look at this stage and let me know if
> there are any that particularly stand out for them. The images are here:
> http://wajsman.smugmug.com/gallery/704709
> 
> Nathan
> -- 
> Nathan Wajsman
> Almere, The Netherlands
> 
> General photography: http://www.nathanfoto.com
> Seville photography: http://www.fotosevilla.com
> Stock photography: http://www.alamy.com/search-results.asp?qt=wajsman
> http://myloupe.com/home/found_photographer.php?photographer=507
> Prints for sale: http://www.photodeluge.com
> 
> 
> 
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