To toss or not to toss

For the last few days I've been reading On Being a Photographer by David Hurn and Bill Jay, one of several intriguing books on this subject published by Lenswork Magazine. I came to a section about contact sheets and was tempted to skip it, since digital photographers don't really have to deal with contact sheets.

But I decided to read through it anyway, and am coming to realize that the folders of images I examine through the PhotoShop browser are almost exactly like contact sheets. So when the authors talk about taking multiple shots of any given scene, what they call "little sequences of the photographer stalking the image," I somehow feel vindicated, that it's actually okay to shoot a scene from several different angles and allow the final decision to be made when you are able to compare the results.

Even more reassuring was the phrase, "the more static the scene, the more images I tend to shoot." Because that's true of me as well. The challenge for me, once all the images are loaded into the computer, is throwing the lesser images away. It's almost always clear which is the best of a set. But because I understand that my sense of design is always evolving, it's often difficult to discard images which are close to perfect but not quite, for fear they may contain something that would be useful later.

This is not so different, I think, from my husband's tendency to keep around old clothes, and old articles he's printed off. Nor is it very far from what we used to call "the Depression mentality": our parents' tendency to keep EVERYTHING -- even old string, rubber bands, and used Saran Wrap -- for fear such things might again become scarce.

What is this fear that keeps us from throwing things away? And, in the case of my photographs, ALL of which are backed up elsewhere on another disk, how irrational is it to keep close to hand seven variants of a single image, when the likelihood is high that only one will ever appear in print? Surely the healthiest thing would be to eliminate as much clutter as possible.

Here the authors of On Being a Photographer help me again. Because what they help me to realize is that the discard process gets slowed down considerably by my desire to learn from the lesser images. If I have several versions of the same shot, I tend to open all of them at once, and then compare each to each, observing my preferences and at the same time analyzing them.

And that process becomes almost meditative as I sink into each of the images: what does this one make me feel? Why does this element bother me, and is that a good or a bad thing? How much of the appeal of this one is still caught in the experience I had taking it?

For this image, for example, I have several variants. But to get this particular one I almost fell into the water: does that mean it's my favorite because of its vertiginous memories, or because getting that extra vantage point, taking out those last bits of distracting background, made all the difference? If the answer isn't clear, I tend to keep the others, hoping that over time I will become more objective, and knowing that in the meantime there is still something to be learned.

I wonder how many years it will take before I come to accept that all these little quirks of character, the ones -- like this reluctance to toss extra images -- which certain voices in my head condemn, are actually little blessings, pieces of me that keep me on this curious path I travel. How long before the Voice from within that says "You are okay, and I love you" will overpower the ones which accuse me of waste, laziness, or stupidity?