<\/a> In the meantime, I thought it might be interesting to briefly outline how I normally edit my work. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll do this using my first book, Motherland<\/a>, as a case study. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve also pulled out some quotes from other photographers who discuss their approach to editing.<\/p>\n To produce Motherland I shot just over 5000 frames during the course of my year traveling across Russia (for the techies among you, I used a Mamiya 7 camera with Kodak Portra 220 film). Every three months, on my return to Moscow to get a visa extension, I had the film processed and contact sheets made. This enabled me to do some editing during the course of the journey. It also allowed me to evaluate how each stage of the project was developing, what themes were emerging and work out what I needed to be looking for during the next stage of shooting. Critically, it also meant I could check that the camera\/ lenses were working properly and that the film hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been fogged by some Soviet-era airport security scanner.<\/span><\/p>\n On my return to England I made a wide edit of 500 images from the contact sheets. This selection of images I scanned on an Imacon and then made larger contact sheets. These sheets were then spiral bound into a book. Here are a couple of pages from the book-<\/span><\/p>\n Over the course of a few weeks I would return to the photographs marking those images that I was most interested in. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d start with a small cross in the top left corner with a yellow chinagraph-<\/p>\n Then finally mark the definitive photographs on all four sides-<\/span><\/p>\n After a couple of months I gradually (and somewhat painfully) whittled the 500 images down to the final book edit of 153 photographs. This was done with the help of some editors, most notably Chris Boot<\/a>, my publisher. It was critically important that I had an external eye (and someone I trusted and respected) to help with the editing. I was too emotionally attached to the photographs and in several cases wanted to select images that just weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t strong enough or didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fit as a whole.<\/span><\/p>\n The final stage was to prepare the 153 scanned photographs, getting the colours correct and doing some slight cleaning up in photoshop. They were then turned into CMYK files for the printers. I also made 10×8 prints of all the photographs which were used for colour matching at the printers.<\/p>\n With regards We English, the editing process will be made slightly easier as the 5×4″ negative is a lovely size to preview, which means I won’t have to scan as many images. Time is also on my side. The book won’t be going into production until Spring next year. I’m envisaging there will be about half the number of photographs in the book than there were for Motherland.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Other photographers discuss their approach to editing-<\/strong><\/p>\n These quotes are taken from the book Image Makers, Image Takers<\/a> by\u00c2\u00a0Anne-Celine Jaeger.<\/span><\/p>\n Mary Ellen Mark: “Editing is extremely difficult. It’s taken me a long time to learn how to edit. Teaching has helped me with editing. When I’m editing my own work, I do a first general edit. Someone in\u00c2\u00a0my studio then scans my edits and enlarges them to approximately 5×7. We place all the enlarged scans side by side which makes it easier to see which frames are the best. Then I choose the final edit.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/span><\/p>\n Martin Parr: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You usually have a hunch, but the great thing about photography is that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so unpredictable, so you never quite understand how and when a good photograph comes about. But when editing, I do contact sheets, then machine prints and then select from that.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/span><\/p>\n And when asked what makes one image stand out more than another, is it emotional or an intellectual reaction he answers: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It must be intuitive. If it were intellectual, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be able to explain what happens. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a photographer. I express myself visually, not verbally.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/span><\/p>\n Eugene Richards: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I pretty much know that a photograph is \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsuccessful\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 or not when I take it. So when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m home from an assignment, what I mostly do is go looking for those \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsuccessful\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 pictures, hoping that I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t kidding myself or that I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t screw up.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/span><\/p>\n Sebastiao Salgado: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I do a first choice from contact sheets and then do many, many work prints. From that, I then choose an average of six images per film. Then I reduce it down to whatever is needed for the magazine in question. I shoot about two to three hundred rolls of film, if I am away for several months.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/span><\/p>\n Rineke Dijkstra: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I scan the negatives and make them bigger so you can see them more. Then I might leave them for two weeks because you need distance to see them properly. It happens to me that I take a picture and I think it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work at all and then I look at it three years later and I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a great picture. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s probably linked to having something in mind and being disappointed that your expectations weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t met.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/span><\/p>\n Rankin: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like editing so I always try to fob it off on to someone else, whether it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a picture editor or someone in my office. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be surprised what other people can bring to your pictures.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/span><\/p>\n Alec Soth: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153At the beginning of a project I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have all these different pictures, because I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m doing and the themes haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t emerged. The more trips I make, the more pre-editing goes on. I might see something that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interesting but it won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fit in. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s when taking a picture becomes difficult. I think in terms of a book and try to assemble it in my brain. I might take couple of hundred and then edit that down into a series. In the end it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about creating a mood.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n And a few paragraphs taken from On being a photographer – David Hurn\/Magnum in conversation with Bill Jay<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/we-english.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/_00200091.jpg\" "\\"_00200091\\"")
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