[Leica] craft project and a cookie

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

Eric showed and asked:
Subject: [Leica] craft project and a cookie


> First Night Sioux Falls was a non-alcoholic, family-friendly way to ring 
> in
> the new year.  First year we've done this.  (We meaning both my family and
> our city.)
>
> I took along my "travel kit"...M6 + 35/2.  I can't decide which of these 
> is
> my favorite:
>
> http://canid.com/current/first_night_2004_2.html
> http://canid.com/current/first_night_2004_5.html
>
> Shot with Fuji NPH.  Comments always welcomed.  Even if the comment is,
> "Hey...this should have never seen the light of day.  I need to go gouge 
> out
> my eyes right now, thank you very much."  I'm biased.  I don't claim to do 
> a
> good job editing my own pictures.  I have a thick hide.  Really.  :)<<

Hi Eric,
We're are our own worst editors! WHY? So don't feel bad about picking and 
choosing. I think the only thing worse is "picking and choosing by 
committee!" ;-)

Simply because we're bias, physically involved in the shooting, sounds, 
feelings. And we're quite often emotionally involved with the subject. So no 
matter what we think of being non-bias and the best of our own work, there's 
a great deal of non-photo considerations playing with our editing / 
selection process.  And that's why another editor / person quite often picks 
a picture completely different than we do ourselves. :-)

Trust me, for example think about the photography Sandy Carter and I shot 
for our book "Women in Medicine" . We made our own selection, then gave it 
to the other to make a selection. Then we did that 3 times back and forth. 
Cutting or adding. Result?  Today when we look at the contacts, hundreds of 
sheets of them we still inevitably say, "What the hell were we thinking? How 
come we didn't select this one, that one, or a number of others. Actually 
there's enough material to almost do another book of equal quality, or 
better, without shooting another frame. ;-) It's always a challenge when 
there's a number of photographs to select from.

Instead of looking at this as a 1 or 2 picture decision, why not look at it 
as a "picture series combo on one subject doing her cookie project on First 
Night?" Given there's a nice selection to work with, would've been better 
with some slightly different angles. ;-) We'll get to that part later. One 
might refer to it as a "picture combo."

With 7 photographs to work here goes for comment:

Picture 1: Good camera eyeline level and could've been a keeper accept for, 
back ground lady and paper on wall coming out of your daughter's head. 
Positive part is shallow depth due to the aperture. Too bad you didn't stay 
on the other side of the table or changed your angle to the left and get the 
lady out of the way. Or waited a moment for her to move. However, waiting 
could mean a lost photo and I'd have moved myself quicker to the left to 
clear the bkgd. clutter.

Picture 2: Lower angle and in this kind of picture situation I'd have stayed 
at her eye level as I feel this makes a stronger picture all round and also 
eliminates some clutter in foreground and back ground.

CROPPING! This can still be turned into a shot that works, OK a slightly 
lower camera angle would be preferred. Crop so you eliminate window and a 
chunk of the bkgd. concentrating tighter on daughter. In this fashion bring 
her up to an almost equal size to No. 1 photo as it helps get rid of the 
junk around her..

Picture 3: Interesting because if you look carefully at your daughter's eyes 
it appears she's observing the boy on her left with peripheral vision as 
though waiting to see what he's going to do. Or did.

 And to crop this to get rid of the window would turn the photo into a 
horizontal or possibly square nor do I think it's strong enough to try and 
save. So I'd drop it at the moment.

Picture 4: It's too confusing, I'd drop it.

Picture 5: CLASSIC PHOTO! :-) Enjoying the fruits of her labour! I'd crop it 
slightly tighter and get rid of the wall art behind leaving her clean 
against bkgd. The crop would be right across left to right off at the lower 
corner of the on wall picture. And straight down on each side where it is 
now. Clean and classic.

Picture 6: it's a nice happy snap, however to much going on to be able to 
crop and still make much sense out of it. You'd have to take the balloons 
off not much above her head. And the face painting just doesn't work as it's 
not the right angle to the face and what's happening. I'd forget this one 
also.

Picture 7: A beauty! Right in your face happy face photograph! :-) And the 
final of the combo!

Not sure if this meets with your vision, but I see picture 2 with major 
cropping. Picture 5 with slight crop and picture 7 as the clincher for a 3 
picture combo.

If you're one of these people who do not believe in cropping, well I can't 
do anything about that as that's not real life in photography unless one is 
a pseudo-arteeeeest! Quite frankly damn few people can shoot perfect 
non-cropped pictures. But in this case a few cropping changes and it turns 
this series of 7 into a saveable combo of 3 and wildly possible 4.

You'll notice I did not ask exposure and lens details as that's not the 
least bit of interest after the fact of exposure being made.  I don't care 
how you did it, I just want to see interesting well captured motivating 
moments. And that sir you've done with a few of these.

ted