Tips /

2 - Organizing Your Photographs

Four Principles

The four principles below will guide your organizing.

#1 - Devise a Workflow

Use the suggestions below to devise a workflow.

Experiment with the workflow.

Don't immediately use the workflow on all of your photographs.

Refine the workflow with a few downloads from your camera.

Then, apply the workflow to your older photographs.

#2 - Use the Passage of Time

The passage of time makes editing easier and more effective.

At first, nibble on your photographs like a guppy.

After the passage of more time, chomp like a piranha.

Garry Winogrand used the passage of time to edit.

Photography editor Mason Resnick took a workshop with the street photographer.

He [Garry Winogrand] never developed film right after shooting it.

He deliberately waited a year or two, so he would have virtually no memory of the act of taking an individual photograph.

This, he claimed made it easier for him to approach his contact sheets more critically.

"If I was in a good mood when I was shooting one day, then developed the film right away," he told us, I might choose a picture because I remember how good I felt when I took it, not necessarily because it was a great shot.

You make better choices if you approach your contact sheets cold, separating the editing from the picture taking as much as possible.1

The emotional charge of taking the photograph fades with time.

You need to use emotion for judgment.

For example, see Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain by Antonio R. Damasio.

However, a fading of some of the emotion may allow cognition to enter the editing debate as well.

#3 - Sorting Versus Deleting

Think sorting rather than deleting.

Many photographers delete only the obvious cliinkers.

Instead of deleting most of your photographs, sort them into different levels of quality.

#4 - Your Photographs Are Not You

Many photographers berate themselves as they look at their photographs.

If you do so, think of your work as being your children.

Yes, your photographic children contain parts of you, but they're also separate from you.

Don't abuse your photographic children.

They're just children that need some boundaries and limits.

Next, we'll look at the criteria you can use for organizing your photographs

1 Resnick, M. (1988, July). Coffee and workprints: A workshop with Garry Winogrand. Modern Photography, http://www.photogs.com/bwworld/winogrand.html.