I’ve been editing my photos from 2012 all week. I’ve been
trying to distill the entire year into just twelve images. The first part of
the process was to wade through the thousands of photographs I created this
past year and cull the best into a folder that eventually contained about 140
images. From there it was easy to pare the selection down to my top 30 images.
The selection of just 12 images was more challenging. Maybe half of my final
selection got picked again and again, but the other half could have just as
easily been replaced by other images from my top 30. Of course, I see these
photos in a way that no one else can, I have emotional attachments to the
places and moments in which these images were created. Although I try to be as
objective as possible, your choices may be quite different from mine.
I shot more photographs last year than
in any other year of my life. While at the same time I made a conscious
decision to stay close to home. I only traveled more than fifteen miles from
home for photography a handful of times, less than any year before. I can practically
count on one hand the number of photo excursions I had beyond that fifteen mile
radius.
And now I’m asking myself, was it worth it? Did I accomplish what I had hoped to,
by staying close to home and photographing more frequently? Did the volume of
work lead to more individual stellar images? Or, did the lack of exceptional
landscape locations lead to a less inspiring collection of photographs?
I knew at the outset that I would be forced into looking more closely at
details; that intimate landscapes and close-ups would be my bread and butter
rather than grand landscapes. And yet at the end of the year my top images were
filled with picks from the few ventures I made to more dramatic locations. Why
were images from one week spent shooting in California, disproportionately
represented in my top 30? Was it the novelty of these images to me, their
relative newness, or is it just the fact that all places are not created
equally, that regardless of season or time of day, the Earth makes more
magnificent gestures in some places?
Undoubtedly the best thing to come from this experiment was that my photography
went in new and unexpected directions as my affection for birds and my interest
in photographing them blossomed. I began to see birds as ready subjects, and I
began to take a different approach to address a completely new set of
photographic challenges. One of the main things this did for me was to open up
the middle of the day, light I had previously shunned, I found useful. Indeed,
most of my shooting this past year took place outside of the golden hours of sunrise
and sunset. In fact, it’s almost impossible to capture anything but the
silhouette of a bird at the edge of the day.
With most of my time spent photographing birds coming in the second half of the
year, I was encouraged to have created quality portraits of at least fifteen
different species by year’s end. And when I compare my best bird photographs
with my best landscapes, some of them hold up pretty well. Five bird images
ended up making my top 30. Bird photography, or attempted bird photography, did
however account for the thousands of worthless images ending up on my CF cards
and hard drives, which is why it took me a week to edit.
Editing all of your images from the year to the best dozen is an incredibly
useful exercise. And when you compare these images with your best from past
years you can really see the trends and changes in your style. When I see all
of my best images from the year in one place, I’m both proud of what I’ve
accomplished and humbled by the possibilities for improvement.
