[Leica] Dutch tilt - new photos

[Harvey.Arche at jp2hs.org (Arche, Harvey)]

B.D. wrote:
Edit, edit, edit. I'm struck by how good some of your street stuff is John -
really strong images that either amuse, bemuse, or confuse. But then they
are surrounded by far too many images that are simply photos of people on
the street. Any one doing serious street photography is going to have dozens
and dozens of those throw aways for each gem; the trick is to throw them
away. :-)

B. D.


On 6/20/06 11:17 AM, "John Beeching" <johnbeeching@gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear All,
> 
> Some photos from my recent visit to Amsterdam.
> http://staff.bath.ac.uk/bssjrb/Photographic/dutch/dutch.htm
> 
> Mostly 28mm Elmarit, one 35mm Summicron, one 90mm Elmarit.  All Tri-X
> in Xtol 1+3.
> 
> Comments and criticisms welcome, as always.
> 
> Thanks for looking,
> 
> John

A couple of things. Great pictures, John, but overall not as powerful as 
your recent 'May' posting, so in a way I'm in agreement with B.D.. Some 
really terrific stuff scattered in there. 
On the other hand, I tend to view what goes on here as a consensual working 
space. Yesterday, and earlier this morning, I was thinking a lot about how 
much crap I had building up in my galleries. I tend to post a lot more junk 
than I might, in the clear light of reason, actually want to be publically 
associated with. I think many of us do. And I will continue do so (B.D., 
have you taken an axe to the 'T-shots' yet? ;^)) because just airing the 
damn things gives me a degree of perspective, or at least psychological 
distance, that I wouldn't get letting them sit cluttering up my desktop. I 
don't even need to get any feedback, its simply knowing the stuff is getting 
tracked up by other people's eyes.
Winogrand, and apparently Henry Wessel, let their negs sit for a year before 
looking at them in order to get that distance. Jeez, I wish I had the time 
and their organizational ability (not to mention eyes, insight, and 
artistry).
Meanwhile I've got a diaperload generating heat in Brian's servers. And 
that's just wrong (even as imagery). What to do about it? I decided this 
morning: Binge-Purge. Go about the business of posting and eliciting 
criticism (next: a day at the dragstrip). But come December, and the 
winding-down of '06, I'm going to streamline the year's postings down to 
the, say, 10% of stuff I still think of as 'keepers'.
Does this mean I'm advocating an indiscrimate, scatter-gun approach to 
selecting what gets posted? Of course not. In that, the forum is like the 
marketplace: after a while nobody even looks at a product that sucks. 
Generally speaking, even if I put up a bunch of images in a given post, 
there are probably fewer than 8% of the total from the shoot that make that 
first cut. I'm willing to bet that John shot 10x as many images in Amsterdam 
as we're seeing.
So, 'edit, edit, edit'? Yes, of course, but after - not before - taking 
advantage of the tool that best helps me do it. 
GOYA & Shoot,
Arche