I managed, this year, to get everyone into at least one picture. That’s the group photo in the middle there. The other photos, the portraits and action shots, were more or less random; I tried to get people doing stuff, but there were a lot of people and a lot of stuff going on. What I’m trying to say is anyone I didn’t get an action or candid shot of is my fault. Everyone was beautiful and a lot happened.
I’ve spent longer than I wanted to on this edit, too. I’ve realized that when it’s a short post, like the recent ‘Taco Bell but pretty’ post, come out really easily, almost without effort. I shoot for a short while, under a hundred raw images to edit, take the four or five that are good, and put them up. Then I write something stream of consciousness about them or what I was doing then or really anything, straight into the CMS text box like a real sicko.
Other posts, like this one, I feel an amount of pressure to ‘get it right’ because there are real stakes involved. 3-4 days shooting, a lot of feelings, things I know I missed that would be good to have, etc etc. Have to reconcile all that with what I do have and move forward. Let go of the bad pictures that cover a moment I care about. Write something good for the people I know will be looking at it. Also, while I might start with 100 raw pictures for a short post (sometimes it’s literally one photo that I just like), this one went from about a thousand raw images to 100 ‘keepers’ that were worth bringing into lightroom. The 100 keepers is the easy part, getting those to these 60 was much harder.
I could probably get this to a tighter edit, given more time, but I have made everyone wait too long already. Plus, like Sophie says, people like a lot of pictures. I was really happy with how the new camera performed; this is the first year I’m really happy with the photos from people dancing and making art.
One other consequence of doing this post 6 weeks after the event: the writing ends up being about the edit and not the thing. I should keep field notes, I guess, so I can reference what happened. Next year!
