the last word

Photography meets digital computer technology. Photography wins -- most of the time.

  • site home
  • blog home
  • galleries
  • contact
  • underwater
  • the bleeding edge
You are here: Home / The Last Word / Analyzing Eric’s curation

Analyzing Eric’s curation

July 2, 2010 JimK Leave a Comment

As I went through the box of prints that Eric Bosler selected for the Hartnell show, I put the image files into a Lightroom collection that I created for the exhibition. The sort order happened to be “Capture Time”, so it was easy to see whether the pictures were from the beginning, the middle, are the end of the 3 1/2 year series.

Eric picked images representing all phases of the series, with equal representation of each. When I show people work from the series, I emphasize the later pictures. I think there’s a natural tendency for photographers to like their latest work the best; I know that’s true for me. Also, as I work more in a series, I begin to appreciate what it is all about, and the later pictures tend to be truer representatives of what has emerged as my intent.

For example, I thought I did some great work in Miami Beach, which was one of the last places I worked on Nighthawks. Eric picked only one image from there, and that one could have been make in any big city.

Eric’s lack of emphasis on consistency applies to the shape of the images as well. Because this series is captured on the fly, it’s not possible for me to simultaneously have pleasing compositions and maintain the same aspect ratio for all the images; I must crop after the exposure. Most of the cropped images end up about twice as long as they are high. Some need to be squarish, and maybe a little taller than they are wide; I tend to leave them out of presentations, and I left them out of the show on the East Coast. Out of  Eric chose four of the taller pictures. I can now see some possibilities for variety in hanging that wouldn’t have existed if all of the photographs had similar shapes.

With the Nighthawks pictures there’s a continuum in the dimension of abstraction; some of the images are almost completely realistic, bordering on documentary, and some are quite abstract.  In putting together the Choate show, I picked images that straddled the line. Eric picked one lifelike image for the Hartnell show, and several that are quite abstract.

To quantify the differences between Eric’s picks and mine, I set up another Lightroom sort order, this time by the number of stars I had assigned to the pictures.  I am not very precise about assigning star ratings in Lightroom, but I do it to make it easier to pick images for particular purposes. Still, I find the following comparison illuminating. Of the 34 images in the Hartnell chow, there are five with five stars, fifteen with four stars, nine with three stars, four with two stars, and one with one star. Among all the images in the series, there are seven with five stars, fourteen with four stars, 27 with three stars, 25 with two stars, and 107 with one star.

It’s great that I now get to see my work through someone else’s eyes, and I’m hoping that the people who come to the show will feel the same way.

The Last Word

← A fresh perspective Getting ready for an exhibition →

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

February 2023
S M T W T F S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728  
« Jan    

Articles

  • About
    • Patents and papers about color
    • Who am I?
  • Good 35-70 MF lens
  • How to…
    • Backing up photographic images
    • How to change email providers
  • Lens screening testing
    • Equipment and Software
    • Examples
      • Bad and OK 200-600 at 600
      • Excellent 180-400 zoom
      • Fair 14-30mm zoom
      • Good 100-200 mm MF zoom
      • Good 100-400 zoom
      • Good 100mm lens on P1 P45+
      • Good 120mm MF lens
      • Good 18mm FF lens
      • Good 24-105 mm FF lens
      • Good 24-70 FF zoom
      • Good 35 mm FF lens
      • Good 60 mm lens on IQ3-100
      • Good 63 mm MF lens
      • Good 65 mm FF lens
      • Good 85 mm FF lens
      • Good and bad 25mm FF lenses
      • Good zoom at 24 mm
      • Marginal 18mm lens
      • Marginal 35mm FF lens
      • Mildly problematic 55 mm FF lens
      • OK 16-35mm zoom
      • OK 60mm lens on P1 P45+
      • OK Sony 600mm f/4
      • Pretty good 16-35 FF zoom
      • Pretty good 90mm FF lens
      • Problematic 400 mm FF lens
      • Tilted 20 mm f/1.8 FF lens
      • Tilted 30 mm MF lens
      • Tilted 50 mm FF lens
      • Two 15mm FF lenses
    • Found a problem – now what?
    • Goals for this test
    • Minimum target distances
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Printable Siemens Star targets
    • Target size on sensor
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Test instructions — postproduction
    • Test instructions — reading the images
    • Test instructions – capture
    • Theory of the test
    • What’s wrong with conventional lens screening?
  • Previsualization heresy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Recommended photographic web sites
  • Using in-camera histograms for ETTR
    • Acknowledgments
    • Why ETTR?
    • Normal in-camera histograms
    • Image processing for in-camera histograms
    • Making the in-camera histogram closely represent the raw histogram
    • Shortcuts to UniWB
    • Preparing for monitor-based UniWB
    • A one-step UniWB procedure
    • The math behind the one-step method
    • Iteration using Newton’s Method

Category List

Recent Comments

  • Brian Olson on Fuji GFX 100S exposure strategy, M and A modes
  • JimK on Picking a macro lens
  • JimK on Picking a macro lens
  • Glenn Whorrall on Picking a macro lens
  • JimK on What pitch do you need to scan 6×6 TMax 100?
  • Hatzipavlis Peter on What pitch do you need to scan 6×6 TMax 100?
  • JeyB on Internal focusing 100ish macro lenses
  • JimK on How focus-bracketing systems work
  • Garry George on How focus-bracketing systems work
  • Rhonald on Format size and image quality

Archives

Copyright © 2023 · Daily Dish Pro On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Unless otherwise noted, all images copyright Jim Kasson.