Few and Far Between

“ Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop." –Ansel Adams

The godfather of the zone system, Ansel Adams, knew what he was talking about. Great photos, significant photos, are few and far between.

This is still true in this day and age when every one has a digital camera and the feedback loop is so short anyone can take a good photo. A good photo is not a significant photo. In fact, during any given year you might only take a handful of truly memorable images. Sure your odds will go up if you take thousands of photos in a year. But for most of us who aren't full time photographers, that probably isn't going to happen.

If I was going to be truly honest with myself about my underwater photographs...their might be 20 significant images in 20 years of work. It was never easy shooting nearly blind underwater with a slow shutter speed, on film no less. Capturing a useable image, much less a significant image, was its own victory. 

I have taken over 5500 Lego mini figure photos this year and I would be hard pressed to come up with eight images I would include in my portfolio. That ratio is slightly better than my underwater ratio of usable images to images shot, but still not that impressive. Luckily, when I look at those eight images they make me feel all "warm and fuzzy inside" (my sons phrase) and I know that it is all worth it.

So try not to get discouraged by the sheer number of images that need to be taken to get a significant image. Remember you are in good company: you, me and Ansel. 

What is your favorite image of the year? 

How many images do you have in your portfolio? 

"Now where?"

This is my new favorite photo of 2014 

Ansel Adams, the WSJ and a bowl full of mush.

This morning while I was enjoying my morning bowl of mush and reading the Wall Street Journal I came across a wonderful article on photography. It had me on the first paragraph:

Ansel Adams, a piano prodigy before he picked up a camera, once declared that the photographic negative was like a musical "score," while the final print was akin to the concert "performance". - except from What does Art Look Like by Richard B. Woodward

This brought me right back to the conversations that +Me2 and I have been having about the pros and cons of printing your own work. Yes, printers are a pain in the ass and the ink expensive. Yes, you can send your files out and get a perfectly serviceable image back. But if you want to take your game to the next level there is nothing to compare to making minor and major edits to a print based on seeing a proof come directly out of your own printer.

When the world was only shooting in black and white it was not uncommon to have a dark room in your own house. With the advent of color printing this became unfeasible and most photographers where content to send their film to a lab for printing. Now with excellent inexpensive printers (a relative statement I know) plentiful, it seems a shame to send out what can be done easily in the comfort of your own home.

I'm not usually a control freak, but I find it indispensable to see what my images look like off the screen before I deem them worthy of showing and selling. Light, color, shadows, highlights all look different and once the image is on paper. I will often see corrections that need to be made that I could never have foreseen by looking at a screen.

So call me old school, but I agree with Ansel Adams and feel that to fulfill your potential as an artist you need to print your own work.

~ xxsjc

Go ahead and read the WSJ article I mention earlier, it refutes everything I just said. 

In further defense of printing, if I had not enlarged this image myself, I would never have seen the spider climbing on the rock. This is a detail that can only be seen at A2 or larger, but in my opinion it makes the image.