Relax. This isn’t a navel-gazing retrospective. It’s an effort at editing my photo library.
I took some time last night to go through the photos I shot in 2010, to find ones that were good. I do this long after taking them, to distance from the emotional connection - it’s easy to think a photo’s good if it’s of family member etc… if you like the content or moment. But I try to go through on a second (and third, and fourth) pass to find ones that are good on their own. I started doing this delayed review after watching an interview with Gary Winogrand, where he mentioned that he doesn’t even develop film for at least a year after he shoots it, to separate himself from the emotion of the moment.
Last year, I figure I shot at least 10,000 photos (probably over 20,000 based on my keep/delete ratio). I kept just over 2,000. And after going through the 2010 album 4 times, starting at 1 star then voting up the best of each round and moving on to repeat the process, I wound up with 70 “good” ones. That’s not bad. I could probably go through the set a couple more times to winnow it down some more. Maybe next year.
