Keep or Toss?

A part of me thinks I like these, but at the same time, I say "WTH are you keeping these for?"

What do you think?

The first one's out of focus + I'm not sure about your composition and the second doesn't have a point of interest to attract my attention.

In my opinion, you should dump #1 and think about #2. As it is it looks cluttered and confusing and I'm unable to think of a way of improving it, so I'll come back to it when I'm not so tired.

Woodworker wrote in post #16778008
The first one's out of focus + I'm not sure about your composition and the second doesn't have a point of interest to attract my attention.

I agree, I would toss both of these. The second one has nothing of interest but I do actually like the first shot, it does need the whole of the feet sharp though and not just a couple of toes. So, if it is possible to do a reshoot on that one, I would give it another try but with a much smaller aperture.

Yeah, I agree about the second one being pretty pointless.

I totally screwed up the shot of the feet. Had been shooting the bird in manual, but had been in Av most of the day, and didn't change anything when I took the feet shot. The SOOC is severely underexposed, and the recovery processed killed it, not to mention the dof.

Just have to wait for one of those ugly things to stand on a railing I guess.

Well, I like them both. I like the narrow dof of the first one; makes me curious about what this creature looks like. The second one has interesting shapes and textures; its not much from a compositional standpoint but the shapes and textures hold my interest. My 2 cents.

David

Thanks David!

And because you asked -

Is that a muscovy duck? Poor things are about the ugliest creatures out there.

Not sure about the first one, but I LIKE the second shot, couldn't tell you why, but there it is...

I think I'll print them, and see if I still like them after a week.

And yes mark48, it's a Muscovy. A face only a mother could love.

I would put #2 into stock archive to use for the purposes of composition. I don't see any value in #1 at all.

1) DON'T TOSS ANYTHING! Unless it's literally so overexposed or underexposed that it's just pure black or white, then keep it. ESPECIALLY if you "like it" but don't know why. All decisions are made for a reason, and it just boggles my mind to erase that record. It's like taking one's negatives and saying, "I don't like these, I'm gonna burn them." Who freaking does that? You store that crap away in a box for your grandchildren to find. You don't DESTROY IT. This is even more mind-boggling when digital photography became the norm. Back when everyone was shooting 35 mm film, I didn't know ANYONE who took their negatives and deliberately destroyed them. Now we can store thousands of images on a thumb drive. Storage has never been cheaper, and it takes up almost zero space. Yet, somehow people are now MORE eager to destroy what they made? I honestly don't freaking get it.

2) If you say that you like it but don't know why, then that's a pretty freaking good incentive to not throw it away. You might not have figured out why it appeals to you, but maybe you'll have figured that out in a year. It would be a damn shame if you then didn't have your old work to reference because you deliberately threw it away. People figure out where they are going in part by looking back on where they have been. Why in the name of god would one deliberately erase that part of their own history? Richard Avedon shot 20,000 negatives for his American Southwest project and ony a miniscule fraction of those ever were formally presented. What was he doing with the rest? Flushing them down the toilet or setting them on fire? Also...people learn more from their failures rather than their successes, and erasing one's record of failure is an attempt at self-propaganda. a country tries to edit out the awful $hit they did and we call B$ on it, but we try to edit out the awful $hit that WE did and it's like, "oh, that's okay, because I'm just protecting ME from discomfort." And it shouldn't work like that. Editing is important, so hopefully you manage to take your failures and edit them out and not present them. But do not do that to YOURSELF, because that's doing yourself a disservice. If the image is so bad that you look at it 6 months from now and cringe that you made it, then you NEED to experience that feeling. If it's that freaking bad and embarassing, then you NEED to keep it around as a reminder of what not to do. And if you actually like it in some capacity, then you need to keep it around. Because there's a reason why you like it (even if the image is still crap), and that image is providing a visual record of what your work is about. It is an example of what you do, there's a reason why you "like it" even though on a conscious level you think it's crap. Save it, learn WHY you like it, and you're a little bit closer to discovering who you are.

Thought exercise for you, though. Tell me why you like them.

You don't know why? I don't care. Pretend I hired you to take these photos, and you have to explain them to me or you're fired. Or hell...that's making it about me. Don't explain these photos to me, explain them to YOURSELF. Pretend that you're your own boss and you're gonna fire yourself if you don't do an explanation.

Eithewr way...write up what these works mean and why you like them. You don't know? Too bad. Self-examination is part of your job, talking about your work is part of your job. So do it, and accept that you may be wrong as hell.

You owe that to yourself. These might not be "keepers" in your mind, but you thought enough about them to present them here and also include a watermark to protect from theft and promote your name. If the image is that important to you, then tell yourself what you see in the image. Figure that out, then re-evaluate it in a month and see if you were just spouting off bull$***. If there's something about these images that is that important, then you owe it to yourself to figure out what that is.

So...TELL us why you like it.

Clean Gene wrote in post #16778917
You owe that to yourself. These might not be "keepers" in your mind, but you thought enough about them to present them here and also include a watermark to protect from theft and promote your name. If the image is that important to you, then tell yourself what you see in the image. Figure that out, then re-evaluate it in a month and see if you were just spouting off bull$***. If there's something about these images that is that important, then you owe it to yourself to figure out what that is.

So...TELL us why you like it.

Your writings make a lot of sense and I often wonder why members post images here, wanting others to suggest improvements, and yet offering up no reasoning why they were driven to capture it in the first place.

To the photographer, the overriding thing should be whether he or she is happy with it. I'm sure Matisse, Degas, Moore and Hockney didn't care two hoots about what others said about their art but they weren't afraid to present them as their creations. Once an image is altered to suit the taste of another member, then the photographer relinquishes the right to claim it as his or her own.

At present, another photographer has an active thread consisting of images of locks. This is meaningless to me but it obviously has to the photographer, so interest would be created for me if I knew why the photographer took them and felt a wanting to present them here. This happens in many instances and I strongly feel, as you do, that a photographer has an obligation to his or her self to be self-analytical.

I hope to see further writings from you because you are much better at articulating opinions which are also held by myself.

Don't worry Gene, I don't actually 'toss' many of my photos. I use the term toss as a general descriptor, but what it actually means to me is; stop working on it, and just stick it in the archives (and maybe go back to it down the road). I have 3TB of space for my 'tossed' images. The only images I actually use the DELETE key on are those that are missed focus, bad poses, or those that I have multiples of. A good example is of the Muscovy portrait - I have 12 burst shots, and of those, 2 were deleted for OOF, and 2 were deleted because he/she looked away or something similar.

As to why I took theses. They were on a MeetUp photowalk, and we came across the duck. Everyone was standing back taking full-body pics, and IMO, that's a boring pic of a boring (ugly) bird. I first tried to get very close with a fisheye (got the camera about 18" from him), but the bird didn't like that very much, and the 1 shot I did get didn't really give me what I hoped for. I changed lenses, and went tight. The feet were just a different take on the bird that I thought may be an interesting image. I still think it is a different or unique take on the bird. I've never felt myself to be very artistic/creative, but I try, and I do like the way this came out, except for my exposure error (see above). Had he not flown away after these two, I probably would have chimped enough to get a better technical shot.

I have always thought that there is a cool picture in Cypress knees (I think that's what they're called), and while I'm still not there yet with them, this one (so far) has been the one I like the most. Still looking for that really awesome shot of them, so there will be more. One day there will be either an incredibly interesting or artistic shot of them that will work.


I don't post much stuff, but when I do, it's just to see if the image does anything for those that weren't there. Sometimes there is a story or emotion, and I want to get that across, and some times, I just want to see if an image is pleasing or interesting to others.