Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/02/16
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Amen Steve. Photography IS editing. Life passes before us continually. We choose to select 1/100 sec. snippets of that life in our photographs. Admittedly shooting with an 8x10 Deardorf requires more thought and preparation than snapping off 30 pictures with a motor drive but photography is still a matter of selection. Editing, if you will. But given most photographers liberal bias for inclusion, post editing is also required. Unless we take pictures only for ourself we must reduce our mass of photographs to a number that an audience will have the patience to view. In the motion picture industry, most cinematographers operate at a 10 to 1 ratio. Ten hours of raw film are edited down to one hour of screen time. A lot of film litters the cutting room floor. So both sides are clearly right. We edit when we shoot, but we also edit after we shoot. My kids gave me a copy of Australian Frank Hurley's photographs of the ill fated Earnest Shackleton antarctic expedition "South With Endurance." Hurley documented all phases of the ill fated expedition on over 500 glass plates and hundreds of feet of motion picture film. After the expedition lost their ship in the ice, Hurley and Shackleton edited the collection down to 150 plates and a few cans of film to save weight for the overland sled and water portion of the trip. These photographs are the only surviving pictorial record of Shackleton's expedition. They chose well. The pictures are magnificent. On another note, Tina and her editor Maggie have my sympathy. As do the editors of the old National Geographic. Allowing for 15 seconds to review each of Tina's pictures, the two of them must have edited for almost 30 hours, not accounting for coffee and bathroom breaks. Add to that time the prolonged discussions that Tina mentioned. I find that I cannot edit more than 2 hours at a stretch without suffering brain damage. For me, the editing job would have taken over two weeks of agony. Life was a lot simpler 60 years ago when we went out on assignments with a Speed Graphic and six loaded film holders. Larry Z