Do photographers and artists tend to be a bit picky?
You betcha!!
Some, not picky enough.
Most of us are both!
“I guess I’ve shot about 40,000 negatives and of these I have about 800 pictures that I like.” Harry Callahan
Harry Callahan was a self taught photographer who felt he made few solid images. This from Wikipedia, “His technical photographic method was to go out almost every morning, walk through the city he lived in and take numerous pictures. He then spent almost every afternoon making proof prints of that day’s best negatives. Yet, for all his photographic activity, Callahan, at his own estimation, produced no more than half a dozen final images a year.”
We take an awful lot of images every year but do we craft any? We also tend to want to have most of our images be considered very good images but we don’t necessarily take the time to work on creating a really strong piece? I just ask these questions to give you (and I) food for thought.
On the other hand I posit we do create some strong images but don’t think we do because we compare our complete body of work, including our tossers to another photographer’s fully finished work where we only see the finals not the work that went into them.
It is a two edged sword. We need to be confident and not overly critical in the work we produce, but we also need to edit ruthlessly. A conundrum and a fine line to walk if you want to be known as a great photographer.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – Hoping this photo/art quote makes sense because it is being written at 2 AM…. (had coffee too late and can’t sleep)
