Photographing a lot throughout each day with and without specific purpose is essential to you integrating new skills and ideas through your images. Without the generation of the work, there is nothing for you to consider and curate later - what you have to work with at the end of the term is a direct result of what you’ve contributed to your reservoir throughout this experience.
At the end of the day, you're going to need to curate, not just choose images that look 'good.' If you had a great idea and took the time to set it up or go find it and execute it. You MUST complete that learning loop by taking a moment to stand back and look at these images and reflect. Ask yourself things like - are these images doing what I wanted them to do? Do they look how I was previsualizing them? Which have the following technical qualities - good exposure, good light, texture, detail and which are composed well in a way that supports the mood or emotion I'm trying to communicate. Finally - which one is successful in all of these ways?
Whether or not you find the 'IT' image - you must determine what element or variable makes it work (or is lacking). Your choice is to go back and rework the image, or to discover (and only through reflection) that you were looking for this image to do something it was not capable of doing. Perhaps photography isn't the medium - or maybe it's going to need something else or more experimentation or a different angle.
If you can stay curious you will have an easier time sustaining the desire to explore what the right image is for you and to determine which variables and elements contributed to the results you achieved in your work. The challenge then is to get back up and try it all over again or to decide to go into the direction that the work is leading you. It's as important to follow the work and trust in the process as it is to know how to control the variables in making the work.
Let the work guide you - and remember that the past towards mastery is a journey where every step towards your goal is yours to take. You choose to take the step and move forward or stay where you are.
Blue Velvet Chair Images - All of them
No one is immune
to the fact that we all fall short sometimes and not all of our images are going to be masterpieces - nor worthy to highlight - but that doesn't make them 'useless' or a 'waste' - on the contrary, it's the very thing that makes us better. Taking the risk, seeing what happens, staying curious and then doing it all over again and trying something new.
At the last artist residency I did in March at the Sou'wester in Washington, I fell in love with this chair. The color and especially the shape and texture of the velvet upholstery. The chair was right near the window and I had this great view outside to the grassy area in the front of the lodge. Somehow i couldn't really achieve an image that captured the features of the chair that I loved so much. I tried from all of these different angles and I could tell that the framing and composition, while important and really bad in some of the proofs, wasn't really the problem. It was, perhaps, the medium. I ended up shooting it in black and white. I thought that since the features I loved most were about Form and Texture, Shadow and Focus that I'd find B&W film as a better visual interpretive tool. Those negatives didn't come out - I had exposed them on Cinestill XX and didn't compensate for the different film stock developer - it was a silly mistake - but one that I made trying to rush and get these developed as soon as possible. I was impatient.
These were the four images at the time I uploaded the proofs, that I thought were ok. I’m still not sure and think I’ll try again.