Peter Pickering added as editor! Read below for details!
The Britannica Definition:
“Street photography, a genre of photography that records everyday life in a public place. The very public nature of the setting enables the photographer to take candid pictures of strangers, often without their knowledge. Street photographers do not necessarily have a social purpose in mind, but they prefer to isolate and capture moments which might otherwise go unnoticed.”
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French artist and humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as capturing a ‘decisive moment’.
I have been contemplating the relationship between Travel Photography and Street Photography for a few years now. Traditional travel photography that bases itself on “Sense of Place” (as explained by my mentor Bob Krist), benefits tremendously from the addition of “Street” technique. By imbuing “Rhythm of Place” (as stated by Steve Simon) with a human element, you achieve a high level photograph. I also believe that a stern practice of both Street and Travel will produce an extremely interesting body of work! Essentially, placing the human condition into the city/landscape and capturing the perfect exposure that requires timing and command of Bresson’s “Decisive Moment”.
This year, Steve Simon and I have been teaching many Street Photography workshops, and I’m very excited to share what I’ve learned by critiquing your images. This assignment, will also present an excellent primer for those who are unfamiliar with street photography.
Instructions to submit an image to the review:
You may upload ONE image that fits the above criteria as Street Photography in the Tradition of HCB. Upload ONE 2-5 mb jpeg. Images must follow this naming convention: firstname_lastname.jpg ie: david_brommer.jpg and not have a water mark. Images will only be used for a one time recorded critique. By following the naming convention you will receive credit for your work in the form of a shout out during the review.
DEADLINE TO SUBMIT IMAGE IS JUNE 14TH.
The reviewers will choose their “Best in Class” and the winner will receive a $150 Discount to any of the upcoming Suspect Photography workshops.
Peter Pickering, the Australian Photographer who is the founder of the popular street photography Facebook group, “Street Photography Cartier-Bresson Inspired” has agreed to come on as a photo editor of the upcoming Suspect Photography Assignment/critique. Peter Pickering will be choosing 10 submitted images for Steve Simon and David Brommer to discuss live on Zoom and recorded to Youtube.
March 25th we lost a lion of the photographic world, beloved by all who worked with him during his illustrious career, and a great sharer of vast knowledge, Photographer Mel DiGiacomo has shot his last photo.
If you are unfamiliar with Mel, A great place to start is watch the 3 minute highlight reel that the talented Kelly Mena directed and edited for B&H Photo 8 years ago.
I met Mel while I was producing educational content for B&H Photo Event Space and Depth of Field conferences, platforming him many times. His wisdom was infectious, his sense of humor legendary, but it was his seemingly effortless ability to capture photographs that really amazed me. Mel was an inspiration to work with, and I reflect fondly when he came to teach on the many stages we invited him to. I am deeply grateful that we recorded his wisdom so that all may learn and enjoy the many lessons of the great Melchior DiGiacomo.
Mel’s B&H Video LibraryClick on the Image to link to the video on YouTube
The Feral Photographer
This one hour video drips with wisdom about living the life of a photographer. Mel discusses visual literacy, career advice and how to be invisible when shooting.
Wedding Photography Tips: Mel DiGiacomo on Photojournalistic Approach
An absolute must watch short video for any and all wedding/event photographers.
So You Want to be a Sports Photographer?
Priceless advice and techniques for being a sports photographer.
Wedding Event of the Season: Mel DiGiacomo Session
Before there was B&H Depth of Field, there was the Wedding Event of the Season and we invited Mel to speak to 1000 lucky wedding photographers.
Everyone has Mel stories and I’ll share one that stands out for me. When he’d drive in from NJ to NYC to conduct presentations or review sessions, he’d drive his big Cadillac across the river. I’d have to meet him on the street and get him parked which could be a few blocks away. As we walked to the B&H Super Store he kept his Canon EOS 5D MK III and 24mm in his hands casually snapping away at what ever drew his eye. Arms extended, shooting from hip and shoulder Mel just banged out gorgeous B&W street shots effortlessly, sometimes stopping to talk to a stranger or engage with a coffee counter person. The only thing that excedded Mel’s lust for life and image making that was his wit and sense of humor. Mel was loved by all those who came in his circle.
Tom Tedesco, Mel, Neil Clipper and David Brommer at the Wedding Event of the Season 2017 Photo by Brandon Remler
Mel was important member of the pro tennis world. He covered the US Open for decades and was the only non tennis player admitted into the hall of fame! I asked fellow a photographer who I knew worked with Mel, Chris Nicholson (one of the four founders of National Parks at Nigh) about some Mel stories to share.
“My very first experience with Mel was from a distance. Part of my first job with Tennis magazine was managing the photo library. Part of that responsibility was sorting and filing a gigantic batch of Mel’s photos that he let us keep on hand. I learned a lot about how to shoot sports in a different way by seeing thousands of his images as a young adult. That definitely influenced my growth as a sports photographer.
The first time I ever met Mel in person was at a tennis tournament in New Jersey. I was in awe shooting next to him and a few other photographers I respected, what we might call the old guard of tennis photographers, the people who were there when tennis started getting big in the late 60s, and who documented the sport as it grew through the boom in the 70s and into the 80s and 90s. Most sports photographers, including tennis photographers, sit at the sideline with a long lens and shoot repeatedly, looking for the best few photos they can manage to capture out of a few hundred frames by the end of the match. Mel, on the other hand, sat at the side of the court with a rangefinder, picking it up only every few minutes or so to snap one artistic wide-angle black-and-white. It was a good lesson, that there is more than one way to work, particularly if you want to make art out of a common commercial genre. He was shooting with a rangefinder one-handed, mind you.” -Chris Nicolson
When news spread about Mel’s passing there was a great outpouring of love from the local NY Metro area photographers on social media. Mel lives on in his images, memories and those golden Youtube videos above.
God Speed Mel and thank you for being the unabashed and talented you.
Lastly, I’d like to share my favorite Mel joke,
“What’s the difference between a Pizza Pie and a Professional Photographer?”
The Pizza Pie can feed a family of four”
Mel DiGiacomo 1938-2024
Additional Reading:
This is taken from the Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame when Mel was inducted in 2015.
MEL DIGIACOMO
Mel DiGiacomo has been a staple at the US Open for the last 44 years.
Whether it is down on the court, in the stands or directly alongside the players, DiGiacomo is there with his camera in hand. In addition to the US Open, DiGiacomo has traveled the world to photograph a variety of sports and events.
The North Bergen, N.J. native currently lives in Harrington Park, N.J.. where he has proudly resided for the last 40 years. “It’s remarkable that Harrington Park, a 4,800 person town, has two residents in the Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame,” DiGiacomo said. “Neil Amdur, the former Sports Editor for The New York Times and me.”
DiGiacomo began his career at CBS as an usher and worked his way up to Production Supervisor for “60 Minutes.” After working for CBS for ten years, he decided to become a photographer when he was 27 years old. “My friend photographed my semi-pro football practices on the weekends and I always made fun of his photos,” DiGiacomo said. One day, he joked if you’re so good, get a camera,’ so I bought one, put it together and told him that’s what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.”
A year later, DiGiacomo moved to England to photograph rugby, then moved back to the United States and photographed hockey at Madison Square Garden. “A publisher hired me to make a hockey book,” DiGiacomo said. *Gene Scott, Founder of Tennis Week magazine, saw it and wanted the same thing, only for tennis.” DiGiacomo didn’t play tennis and, at the time, had never seen a tennis match. As someone who was familiar photographing football, DiGiacomo began shooting tennis matches with a football lens. The different lens gave him a now perspective on the game, which made him take photos in a way no one else did.
“In those days, you could get close to the players,” DiGiacomo said. “I used to shoot everything in black and white and in a very photo-journalist style, which was another thing people hadn’t been doing.”
DiGiacomo’s photos have been featured in several publications including Sports Illustrated, Tennis Magazine, Newsweek and Lite Magazine. His new style of shooting and vivacious personality greatly influenced his fellow photographers. “He’s a wonderful person to be around because he is so friendly.” Bob Litwin, a close friend of DiGiacomo’s said. “Even with really famous people he becomes a friend, not just a photographer.”
Throughout DiGiacomo’s time at the Virginia Slims Circuit and US Open, he interacted with several professional players, writers and fans including Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Jimmy Connors, Arthur Ashe, Martina Navratilova and Mary Carillo. Outside of sports, DiGiacomo photographed a number of weddings, specifically tennis weddings. The first wedding he shot was Jeanie Brinkman’s, the Director of the Virginia Slims Circuit.
“I didn’t think too much of it,” DiGiacomo said. “Then, 20 years later, I was asked to shoot Jimmy Connors’ Manager Karen Scott’$ wedding, and more stemmed from there.” Pam Shriver, a former professional player, Richard Evans, a longtime tennis writer and Gone Scott each requested DiGiacomo for their big day.
DiGiacomo values all of his work, but is most proud of the impact he has made in Antigua photographing the tennis tournament at Curtain Bluff. In his first year shooting there, he noticed the ball boys and girls had bare feet, so he followed them home to their village, Old Road. “I ended up doing a book that had nothing to do with tennis, but also had everything to do with tennis,” DiGiacomo said. *I was down there for tennis, but I went into the village to document their stories.”
The proceeds from DiGiacomo’s photographs go into the “Old Road Fund” to benefit the children in the village. When the fund earns enough money. it goes toward helping the children attend college. DiGincomo has always supported tennis and the people he has met through tennis. He raised both of his children to become tennis players because he values being part of the tennis community and enjoys that tennis is a sport his kids, who are now adults, can play for years to come.
“I owe a lot to tennis because it changed my life,” DiGiacomo said. “It has given me so much, my family too.”
On this next assignment (or shall we say ‘visual challenge’) we are going to explore how very different subjects can dynamically interact with each other, whether they are thrown in a situation or they just happen to exist in two diametrically opposite circumstances.
The goal of the exercise is to push our vision to the brim of conflict, break free from pre conceived notions and find the harmony in opposition.
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: MAY 5 TH AT MIDNIGHT. LIVE REVIEW MONDAY MAY 6TH AT 6:00 PM
Now point your cameras at it. Here are the rules:
You can submit one image in the theme “OPPOSITES ATTRACT”. This image is an assignment, you are highly encouraged to prioritize creating this photograph in the coming weeks. Since there is so much lead time, only newly created work will be reviewed. You may NOT draw from your archive, by embracing this home work you will gain the full benefit of this assignment,seek out or make the image.
Upload ONE 2-5 mb jpeg. Images must follow this naming convention: firstname_lastname.jpg ie: david_brommer.jpg and not have a water mark. Images will only be used for a one time recorded critique. By following the naming convention you will receive credit for your work in the form of a shout out during the review.
Take this assignment seriously. Street Photographers can hit the pavement and find the opposites attracting or you can set up the photograph with family, friends and other willing accomplices. Start taking notes, write down ideas that come to your mind while thinking about what Opposites Attract means to you. Plan where you will make these photographs or how you will construct the photograph.
One image will be chosen as the best in class and a $50 donation to IPC will be made in the photographers name. Your hard work will do good by supporting an excellent organization.
The International Photographic Council (IPC) is dedicated to increasing worldwide recognition of photography as a universal means of communication. Through a variety of efforts such as the awarding of scholarships to students and the recognition of professional photographers annually at the UN, IPC continues to promote photography in the spirit of its motto: “Peace Through Photography, the Universal Language.”
A natural inclination of photographers, when seeing an interesting subject or scene, is to take one shot and move on. In most cases there was a good photograph in there, but by casually investing in only one shot, the full potential is missed. When you find something interesting you stand a better chance of “scoring a banger”, (meaning making a great image), simply by taking a few more shots and zeroing in on what you saw in the first place. Even if the first shot ends up being the best, at least you got a few to choose from.
A country classic: a pie straight out of the oven cooling off on a pastoral window sill.
What at first sight would seem an easy-peasy composition, needs constant compositional adjustment. Below are the shots in sequence, shown raw out of an iPhone 13 Summer 2023.
I love the shot, but the red car just kills it for me. Way too intrusive, we need to crop it out.
I try to compose the car out, but then a garbage can enters the scene. No one ever said photography was easy. Keep working.
Car is out, but that garbage can is just annoyingly a tad bit in the view middle left.
How about we just fix it in post? Quickly cloned out now but… I feel dirty solving the problem in post rather than in view finder in the moment. Do you feel dirty using cloning tools and generative fill? Tell the truth now.
This the final image. I was bouncing around the kitchen to make sure the background was not distracting and retained a sense of place. I miss the fields, but at least have a slice of them. Now how about a slice of that pie?
“You are responsible for every centimeter of your view finder”
There are a few lessons here, but two stand out. First: watch out for the background. Second, and really equally important as the previous: keep working the scene & subject. Put more effort into making the image and you will be rewarded with better photographs.
This is my final edit on the image. I decided to stay in my style of dominant black and white and ran the file through the raw convertor in photoshop.
The focus is on the streets, and street photography to be precise. I’m very excited to announce the first series of photo walks and workshops in partnership with two of my favorite photography educators, Steve Simon, the Passionate Photographer, and Art of Intuitive Photography’s Mindy Véissid. Before I share with you these exciting opportunities to delve deep into our shared love of photography allow me to tell you why I’m super excited to partner with them.
Steve Simon is a brilliant photographer and educator on many levels. Throughout my tenure at B&H Photo, it’s always been a pleasure to platform Steve as he shared his knowledge in a friendly, responsible and ethical manner. Steve’s background is in journalism and his moniker of being the “Passionate Photographer” is a perfect description of his work. Now focusing mainly on the genre of street and urban photography, Steve’s take is to examine the sense of place along with a humanism often lacking in the genre. Steve blends technology with a keen eye and is a master of teaching the technical while being grounded. I have always had a deep respect for Steve, and to work side by side with him, and a group of students, will be a sublime way to explore two of my favorite cities, Milan and NYC.
Winter New York City Weekend Mentorship Workshop
Let’s start with the NYC three-day workshop which will be an intensive and transformational shooting experience in a wintery NYC. This intimate 3-day weekend masterclass, limited to just 6 students, (as of the writing of this post, only four spots are left open), is designed to engage in both the learning experience and your ability to create a unique and powerful portfolio of imagery from New York. It’s going to be a blast, as Steve and I are connoisseurs of this city, inside and out. While Steve will be focused on sharing his techniques to maximize street photography, I’ll be helping you imbue the work with a style all of your own.
Street and Urban Photography Workshop in Milan, Italy
For the past 21 years Italy and I have had a special relationship. I met my wife Barbara in the B&H Super Store (counter #6) 24 years ago while she was visiting NYC and thus began a love affair with her, and her native country, Italy. I was privileged to study Italian language in Milan for three months and return to the bustling city several times a year since.
Milan is like no other city, and when Steve invited me to teach alongside him I jumped at the chance. To say Milan is photogenic is an understatement! This 5 day intensive Street and Urban photography class, with a side trip to Lake Como, will advance you to the next level. In addition to Steve and I, we will be joined by Ugo Cei, a local travel photographer. I can’t wait to share with you what I know (and love) about Milan, as we explore the neighborhoods, food, and culture of the business and fashion capital of the world.
Both of these workshops include a pre workshop zoom meeting. They are shaping up to be memorable, and most of all, will represent a unique chance to add images to your portfolios and socials that will be treasured and admired.
While both of the above workshops are certainly of an advanced nature, I have vowed to help all levels of photographers. So if multi day/instructor workshops are a little too heavy for you, let’s do Photo Walk Abouts in my native NYC with the Art of Intuitive Photography School that are a fun filled 3 hour stroll.
Winter Walk About in Washington Square Park
12 years ago, an intrepid New Yorker by the name of Mindy Veisid, was a student of mine at the B&H Event Space. She was destined for great things as she launched her own photo school based upon a concept she pioneered called, “Intuitive Photography”. This method espouses an openness to creating images based upon emotions of the self and place. Since that humble start, Mindy has taught hundreds of classes to beginning and experienced photographers. This summer Mindy invited me to teach at her school and I’m excited to be an associate instructor. We are offering two 3 hour programs photographing in my favorite place in NYC, the iconic Washington Square Park! This will be just the beginning of AOIP collaborations and with a modest investment in time and money, you can jump start your photography by joining these “photo walk abouts”.
Learn more here (and check out AOIP’s other offerings):
There you have it, three amazing ways to increase you photo skills, make great photographs, get a handle on your gear, and visit some amazing locations. All skill levels, all budgets. Make sure you have signed up for the newsletter, as I’ll be adding more events in the coming weeks.
One final word, I am honored to be partnering with these two photographer instructors. Having worked with them for well over a decade, I trust and admire them deeply. Being a big fan of the adage “together we stand divided we fall”, I believe learning all together empowers our imaginations, deepens our knowledge, and enhances our experiences.
Feel free to email me any questions, these workshops are limited to 8 students and will fill up quickly. Ill see you on the streets! Let’s go!
This shot was taken while I was at a stop light sitting on my Vespa. I looked up and the drama of the clouds struck me. I slipped the phone out of my pocket pointed it straight up and make this shot. It looked good in color, but the B&W was more dramatic.
When you leave home and hit the road, be it for work, play, or pretty much anything you set out t do, you should always carry a camera. There is a photographic axiom that says, “What is the best camera? The camera you have with you!” and that is undeniably true. The camera you will sling over your shoulder is going to change over the years and a new camera can stimulate you and put you into a photo-taking mood by simply being new. The technology changes, and even the great masters used a range of cameras across thier careers.
Taken at dusk on a bridge over the Arno River in Florence. I pushed the saturation to give it extra punch. I also shot this with my trusty Fuji XPro1, but made the same shot with the IPhone so I could tag and share it by the time I steppe off the bridge.
But sometimes you leave your camera at home because it’s just too heavy and cumbersome. Compositions and photo movements abound, just because you don’t have your camera with you doesn’t mean you aren’t seeing and the photo opportunities are not present. Three things you don’t leave at home that are non-negotiable are; keys, wallet and mobile phone. The camera & phone combo may be the greatest technological achievement of the 21st century because it allows us to always have a camera with us, and the ability to share our images.
Keep your eyes open when walking and when you see something interesting, bam! You can capture faster than you can call your mom. Construction site for Hudson Yards project in NYC.
My only ‘photo-phone’ experience so far has been using the Apple iPhone, so if you are going to call me an Apple fan boy, go ahead, I accept that moniker because I believe in the iPhone and started off with an iPhone 3 in 2007. The first photo I took was a homeless person in a atm bank lobby. Later I would shoot what might have been the first IPhone wedding of NY fashion designer Michele Korn using only the IPhone 3. I fell in love with the device, simply because it was always in my pocket! Dutifully I went from iPhone 3, to 4, to 4s, skipped a 5 and got the 6 early in 2015. The progression has been upward, but the 6 was a big leap in quality from its predecessors. All images shown in this blog post were taken this year with the IPhone 6.
Still Life with the IPhone, you bet! This was a homage to Edward Weston’s pepper. I added the cherry tomatoes to give the image a set of balls 😉
So here are my 6 recommendations:
One- Wipe you lens off each time you go to make a photograph. That lens is tiny, and you need it as clean as can be to maintain sharpness. A finger print will substantially soften the image and lower contrast. An actual smudge or what we call “schmutz” in New York will diffuse your image to the point of total failure. Use your t-shirt, a tissue, or whatever you have handy. Of course a micro fiber is the best choice. My wife Barbara keeps her iPhone in a micro fiber pouch to protect it in her pocket book from scratches and that makes a great way to keep the lens smudge and scratch free.
Nikki Sixx on tour with Six AM. I was about 15 feet back and cropped in post. The colors were awful as most concert photography is, so I just converted to black and white.
Two- Be touchy. Your phone does have auto-focus and auto-exposure, but it can get fooled. Compose your image first, and then tap on the subject of your photo. Once you have a focus and exposure lock, you can then drag your finger up or down to adjust exposure. Very useful for backlit subjects and in that case, touch up for + exposure. This will come handy when you are shooting at the beach or in a snow scene.
View from Little Round Top over the Valley of Death at Gettysburg, PA. This is a great example of working the exposure. I tapped the cannon and then had to further adjust the exposure due to the setting sun in the photo.
Three- Capture with the standard camera setting. Don’t bother with the HDR mode, it’s better to adjust your image later in a post-processing app which we will talk about later. The standard photo is a 4:3 ratio which will give you a standard image. You might want to consider shooting in square mode if you plan on using instagram, since instagram forces you to use square compositions. This will save you having to crop later and perhaps missing a part of the image that you wanted in or is needed for the composition. Getting it as close to perfect in the capture, then fine tuning later in post is a great rule of thumb.
I saw this composition across the street and waited about 3 minutes for the traffic to clear. Look close, All but one (who is eating) are on their phones! I corrected the perspective in Snapseed to make the lines all straight.
Four- Turn the flash off. Yup, unless it is really dark, like the inside of club or outside at night and you are shooting a subject less than 7 feet away, the flash (which is really a led light and not a flash at all) will make a crappy photo. There are three settings, off, on, and auto. By default it’s on auto out of the box, you will want to set that to off. I never ever use the flash function, I hate the way it looks. A trick to use if you must shoot in the dark, is have a friend hold up their iPhone and use it as a flash light. This way, the angle of light gives shape as opposed to your flash right next to the lens making a flat over exposed image.
Go ahead, be that person who posts their food, but make sure it looks good! If you can’t shoot your dish in good light then just don’t. Use the table cloth to add to the ambiance, feel free to arrange the salt shaker and utensils so it looks good. Never use the flash!
Five- Use minimal if any zoom. Any zooming you do by pinching the image will digitally zoom it, and it’s better to just do that in a post app. I advocate if you are good with composition to use a little bit of zoom if you can’t physically get closer, like a shooting a building across a busy street, but really cropping should be done in post to maintain quality. When you have to 8 to 12 megapixels like the iPhone has, you have plenty of pixels to crop in post. Also, your focus can be tricked if you zoom heavily.
Street shooting with the IPhone you never miss a shot. Just keep an eye on the street signs so you don’t get a ticket 😉
Six- Use the best app ever invented, and that is Snapseed. Invented by Nik and then acquired by Google, Snapseed does it all. I love Snapseed because it’s free, and it’s spectacular. I used to advocate Adobe PS Express and Camera bag but Google has super charged Snapseed into a beast of an app. And did I mention it’s free? Every image you see on this page was captured with the iPhone, then opened up with Snapseed and edited. I suggest you subscribe to this blog, I’ll be posting a Snapseed tutorial soon.
NY Harbor from a tall building in Battery Park. the Drama filter in Snapseed just really brings out the rays of light and clouds.
Well there you have it. Six tips to make you iPhone experience rock. Keep shooting!
~David
The house I summered in when I was a kid in the 70’s. Bradley Beach.
And lastly, my two favorite things to shoot, Barbara my wife and the Raven Wing my Harley Davidson.
Looking up to Montmarte, Paris. Canon Power Shot A70
The most difficult aspect of Photography to master is Picture Image Editing. You can learn to shoot better, to expose properly, to capture composition, achieve perfect timing, master the light, focus on details and blur what you don’t want. You will have to ensure you are in the right place at the golden hour, always coaxing gesture from subjects and understanding the camera you hold in your hands, these are all hallmarks of a great photographer. You can learn these things by shooting a whole lot, or you can fast track an be taught in schools and workshops. However there is one skill that can’t be taught, its importance is paramount, yet is seldom discussed in the arsenal of photographic skills, that of picture editing.
Paris in April. Canon Power Shot A70
I’m not referring to post editing, as in using Light Room, DxO, or even Photoshop to crop and adjust, I’m suggesting editing in the sense of “I have these 748 pictures and which ones are the best”? Self-editing is very difficult, I see poor editing while reviewing photographers work frequently and especially among the new photographers. When you have to choose 3 images from your archive, it’s an art all itself to make the right picks.
Notre Dame. This was shot with the Canon Power Shot A70 and heavily worked in photoshop to correct perspective and monochrome convert.
The following seven elements are what I have learned to use over the years. They have served me well and this post is populated with images I found in my archive, never before published pulled up just for use here. Some go back 12 years.
One: Take a page from Ansel Adams and pre-visualize the best shot that can be made from the scene before you. Ansel worked with large format cameras and they force you to get it right with an economy of shutter snaps. Contemplate the image in front of you and take time realizing the elements that will make a solid photograph. Resist a haphazard approach like overshooting in the hopes that one image will have a correct horizon and cloud will be in the just the right place. All this creates is a clutter of files and essentially- a bigger haystack to find the best shot.
Two: Archive or develop as soon as possible. Get the images off the card or the film processed before image anarchy occurs. Cluttered memory cards, unprocessed rolls of film in drawers, make bad for editing.
Three: Soak up a good look at what you have shot. This can start a healthy review of work via the playback button the camera. Don’t be afraid to pixel peep (zooming into the image) to check for proper focus. You have a succession of very similar shots, and one or two missed the mark for focus, but the other shots are tack sharp, feel free to delete the softies right out of the camera. I have found that I can edit very well right off the camera in most circumstances. I like to use a Hoodman Hood Loupe if I decide to pack it, it’s fairly cumbersome but it’s great at isolating your point of view when using the camera LCD.
Four: However you archive, be it Adobe Lightroom or manually like me, do it the same way, set up a consistent file structure and keep two hard drives or a raid as a back up. Name the shoot, and I also will date it too. Once the images are off the card, or processed and scanned, run through them again. Pick out a few favorites. Open them up and do a little post editing.
Five: Show them off and get some opinions. Throw them up on Face Book, tweet ‘em, Instagram them (even though I hate Instagram). My rule when I put up a shot on my Facebook if it gets over 100 likes then I know I nailed it.
Six: Move on. Forget about them. Work on your next shot. When you are ready to do something with them, and need them, make sure you have them properly cataloged on your drives so they are easy to locate for when you need them.
Seven: Dive back in fresh and do what really is your third edit. Based on your internal instinct and some reactions from your network look at your edit again, and also, the un-edited archive. You might very well have missed something. Become friends with this edit, improve on them with post processing. If you need to narrow them down further, set them up in folder for your screen saver and then your monitors become a “familiarization device” to better understand which are the strongest images. I learned this trick from Jock Sturges.
Union Square Pogo dance action. I recall shooting this, then dumping into a folder and forgetting about it. When I found it again I was thrilled to post edit and have a solid NYC street shot. A gem, hidden in a seldom used hardrive.
In summary, don’t shoot so much, go for quality not quantity and ask your network what they think of the images, then sit on them for awhile and keep shooting, return to them and look at your edit and the un-edited again. My last tip is that frequently, a crop is in order. Many a good image can be overlooked but stands out with a good crop. They say it’s all in the eyes.
I honestly don’t know who’s eye this is. I found a folder nested deeply among other folders with about 10 different eyes. I barely recall shooting this.
Suspect Photography 