When the result of your project is a group of photographs, editing becomes the key task of the entire process. Let us assume that you (or your “auto-everything” camera) are technically competent, so the quest for technical excellence is readily achievable.
While it starts out as a quest to find the best photographs, the final goal is not to find the absolute best photograph (which you will eventually do), but it’s to assemble the best group of photographs that tell the story that you want to tell. It’s important to have all the photographs support each other to bring about the best product.
The most difficult part for me is to present a variety of photographs to tell the story. There is a fine line that borders monotony and scatter shot selection of images. I look for horizontal vs. vertical images, tonality (or color palette), varying close up, mid-range and telephoto images, detailed versus overall views, consistency or variety in lighting are choices to be considered in selecting images.
When dealing with a group of photographs sequencing of the images is very important. The audience is not going to be looking at one photograph, but many. How the images transition one to another is a very important issue when you sequence your images. I want to offer the viewer some variety in the images while telling the story with photographs. These are pretty basic criteria that you can use to select the photographs for your project. The artist’s statement will guide you to the correct criteria you need to select images for your project.
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