A Photographic Dilema
has been brewing in my world for some time now, and with this most recent batch of photos staring back at me, I believe it’s time to describe the problem ‘out loud’ in hopes that some clarity will develop.
Speaking in extremely rough estimates, each time I pick up my camera I come back with around 100 RAW images (sometimes I don’t feel so inspired and I end up with 20-50, while other times I’m in the zone and I end up with 200 or more). Each of these events creates a multi-stage processing commitment of 1-2 hours: an initial review to delete failed images, anywhere between one and three rounds of curating in order to ‘tell the story’ of that event effectively, the Photoshop work to make them all beautiful, renaming and tagging of the finished collection, and finally determining which photos are suitable for publication (not everything I shoot gets out to Flickr).
Given how inordinately easy it is to capture an event, when compared with the time and attention necessary to produce a finished product that satisfies me, I find myself with a perpetual backlog of photos. Paraphrased below are the great many conversations I have which speak to this backlog:
Them: Hey, when the fuck am I going to see the photos you shot?!
Us: One of these days asshole.
Them: Just plug the camera in and click upload right? What’s the hold-up shithead?
Us: It’s slightly more complicated than that dickweed.
Then, once I finally get through my process:
Them: Wow thank you! You made me look like a god-damned supermodel.
Us: You’re welcome cunt.
I’m thrilled and flattered to get the sort of response I do from my friends and family, whether it comes in the form of emails, comments in my photostream, or noticing my work in new social profile portraits; I just wish there was a way to minimize the frequency of those first conversations. However, a significant motivation for me to photograph anything in the first place is the selfish desire to document my own life. There are few things I find as enjoyable than looking back at old photos–they’re a fantastic memory accelerator.
One of the difficult philosophical issues here is how do I view photos as a medium? They occupy space both in art and journalism. I’ve always recommended to the less-nerdy of my friends that big cameras are worth lugging around if your goal is to create beautiful imagery, while tiny (read: phone) cameras are perfect for recording moments in time. However the fact is that these two goals are rarely disconnected; the most exquisite photograph often has a story to tell, and the frozen piece of a story can also be art. Journalism should be prompt, whereas art is (relatively speaking) timeless.
Fundamentally I think the only solution here is to make processing my photos a higher priority when I sit down at my desk, but that’s just a fancy way of saying I should procrastinate less (and we all know how easy that is to resolve).
Postscript - Still feel relatively fucked in how to deal with this, but somewhat more motivated.
