As a photographer, processing your photo workflow is one of the most difficult tasks that you will face.  Effective workflow processing requires a few essential ingredients:  A Defined Intent, Compositional Wisdom, Technical Knowledge and Subjectivity.  Subjectivity, in my opinion, is one of the most difficult aspects of workflow processing.  It is the entire purpose of this article series.  Subjectivity requires you to stand back and criticise your work without biased.  It requires you to admit when you made a mistake and it forces you to reject your works.  You’ll need to ignore the amount of time, effort and tedious care that went into each exposure.  The goal is to develop a great portfolio.  To do that, you’ll have to sacrifice – self-edit, if you will – some photos, possibly the great majority of the shots you take. This is the first of a three part series of articles about .  I am of course writing this first installment here on Shutter Photo.  The second article in the series will be written by Kevin Oke – a talented and experienced travel photographer.  Kevin’s article will appear on his site, Kevin Oke Photography tomorrow.  The final installment will be written by Jim M. Goldstein – an incredible landscape and wildlife photographer – on his blog at JMG Galleries on Tuesday. I will of course keep you posted as each installment is published.  The purpose of the series is to educate, through example, the self-editing process – not by showing and explaining what we necessarily keep, but through explaining what gets thrown out and why.

Intent

When I go on a photo shoot, I usually have an intent in mind:  A purpose for the session and a goal that I would like to achieve.  The shots I will use as an example for this article are from a photo walk through Philadelphia.  I was in the process of writing an article for Travelin’ Local and my goal for the article was to write about the cultural infrastructure of the city.  The underlying goal of the photo walk was therefore to shoot the same.  Defining an intent is important both during your photo shoot and during workflow management.  I suggest that you write the intent down so that you can reference it later. The first thing I do after I download my photos is to narrow the field.  In this particular case, I spent an entire day – 14 hours – in the city with my camera.  I returned with close to 400 photos, some experimental, some panaramic sets and others that are exposures of varying settings of the same subject.  I go through my shots two or three times to reject any shot that is out of focus or poorly exposed.  Overcast skies, dimly lit interiors and some failed experiments resulted in about a third of the shots being deleted.  Next, I go through any of the multiple exposures of the same subject to reject all but the best of the lot; though I sometimes keep alternative angle shots if they are appealing.  This has helped to remove another chunk of photos from the set.  At this point, I’m left a little over 100 shots.  By now, I’ve spent about thirty to fourty minutes for a set of this size.  Now comes the difficult part:  What should I reject next?

Refining

Up until this point, I have been getting rid of noticably bad photos and duplicates.  It’s safe to say that the intent has not yet come into play.  From this point on, I’d like to point out that when I reject a shot, I don’t necessarily delete it right away.  In my photo management software, I simply mark them as rejected.  But while these rejected shots may not be appropriate for this series, they may be worthwile as stand-alone works or stock photos.  It’s always a good to revisit these shots later when you aren’t focusing on completing a series.  Meanwhile, with the series in mind, here are a few of the rejects:

Reject 1: For this shot, I was trying to illustrate how the park system literally cuts into the city.  With traffic on both sides and the hint of tall buildings, I feel that the goal was clearly achieved.  I even have some great subjects, two people obviously dressed for athletic endeavors using the path.  But sometimes there’s something minor that will turn me off of an image.  I tend to draw the line, for example, when anyone or anything in the shot could be construed as inappropriate.  That’s a fuzzy line, so I will ask myself:  Would the subjects of this photo be upset if I were to publish the photo on the front page of the daily news? Sometimes, instead of asking that question, I can ask a more specific question:  Do I want a shot in my portfolio that clearly shows a guy reaching to grab some girls ass? Click the image for a full-view.  This shot goes to the trash can.

Reject 2: Photographing buildings and landmarks is hard enough as it is.  Trying to do so in a busy city requires a lot of patience.  With a shot like this, I made a few consessions to myself.  First – I’m not concerned about people and bikes in the shot.  My goal is to illustrate the cultural infrastructure in the city – people are important to me.  But the cars are not.  To get the facade fully in the shot, I had to shoot from across the street.  Patience is necessary in order to get a car in the shot.  But even when you think you time it right, you might catch a car.  This one ran a red light.  Another for the trash.

Reject 3: There will always be a tough reject.  This was the difficult one for this series.  A little background – this is the Rodin Museum which is home to one of the limited series of recastings of The Thinker, arguably Rodin’s most famous piece.  The Rodin Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which is just up the street, are essential pieces of the city’s cultural infrastructure.  Unfortunately, the facade behind The Thinker is under construction.  I’ll be honest, the scaffolding doesn’t really bother me.  But the area was roped off and I don’t feel that I could get the angle that I wanted, nor could I get close enough.  At 135mm, distortions are apparent:  The scaffolding appears to overwealm the shot, the sculpture base appears much larger than it really is and that chain link fence appears to be attached at the base when it’s really a good 15′ behind.  This shot just doesn’t portray what I want, so it gets cut.  I will, however, keep this shot in my library as reference.  I intend to return to the site after construction is complete, and this image will proove to be valuable when planning my shot.  Remember, just because it’s a reject doesn’t mean it can’t be useful.

Reject 4: For those unfamiliar with Philadelphia, this is Franklin Court, the former location of Benjamin Franklin’s home.  The building shown here is the old printing press building.  It’s on the national registry of historic buildings.  This shot clearly demonstrates every goal of my trip:  It shows the historical and cultural fabric of the city.  It’s even a site that I intended to discuss in my article.  So why is this shot rejected?  Quite simply, the picture cannot stand on its own.  Sometimes, you just have to stand back and pretend you know nothing about the shooting location.  If, for example, I were to ask several unbiased viewers:  What is the subject of this photograph? I would end up with several answers.  In fact, if you’re not sure if your subject is clear, ask that very question of someone.  My wife says the subject is the courtyard itself.  But I intended the building with the door as the subject of this photo.  As the subject is apparently not clear, this goes to the rejection pile.

Making the Cut

Below are a few shots that I feel completely make the cut.  They serve all of my intents and they meet my own quality standards.  But one thing I didn’t mention yet is what to do if you end up with more photos than you need that both serve your intent and pass quality control.  Well, now it’s time to think style.  How do the photos relate to each other?  Is it clear they’re shot by the same photographer?  Do they share a common style?  Asking yourself these questions will ultimately help you to narrow down what remains.  If you continue to struggle, just pick a few and save the rest for later.  Just remember, editing down means that whatever doesn’t make it to the show can’t be criticized by your viewers.  So without further delay, here’s two shots that made the cut:

Part II: Part two of this series was written by Kevin Oke and can be read at his site:  Editing and Workflow Part 2 – Racing Cars as Art

Part III: Part three of this series was written by Jim M. Goldstein and can be read at his blog:  3 Critical Criteria of Any Image Selection Workflow

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