Leaving Out the Good Ones

I’m following along with Process ☼ On Photography, by Wesley Verhoeve as he walks us, step-by-step, through the process of making a photo book or zine. We’re on Step 2 — choosing which images stay and which ones go.

In Step 1, we talked about the idea, and the one sentence that holds a whole book together. Mine is this: 

This book is a florilegium: a gathering of flower images from small family-owned flower farms in rural Virginia. They are intended to celebrate the nature of the flowers themselves and the many ways they bring us to our senses.

Wesley explains Step 2:

Now that we have our sentence we know the story we are telling and can judge all our photos against that to measure whether they fit or not. This is a difficult part of the process, because I have to look at everything I shot and accept that most of it will not make the book . . . A photo can be beautiful, and mean a lot to me, and be technically strong, and still not belong in this particular book. Leaving it out is not a verdict on the photo, but rather a decision about this particular story.

With this frame of reference, I was able to eliminate pictures that do not connect to my sentence and pictures that were duplicates.

For example, these pictures show flowers along walkways and gardens, but not specifically those grown in small family flower farms. So while they are technically good, they do not fit the theme. I thought I might need them to fill in gaps in the book, but it turns out I have an abundance of photographs that will work. So these are out.

And these pictures show that flowers can influence design and pattern for textiles, crafts, and other forms of art. But again, they do not fit the theme, and including them would not strengthen my story.

I was also able to eliminate duplicates. Too many pictures of tulips. Better to chose only the best.

And though I love the sculptural quality of the garden tools in this diptych, these pictures are not what this book is about.

As I let go of images, I could see some gaps, too. With my guiding sentence, I can see that photos of the flower farms themselves would add to the story. So pictures like these will be important. I plan to make trips to several more flower farms over the next few months, continuing the project through fall when the growing season ends. I can also see that photographs of flowers as they decay would be interesting, conveying motion in stillness.

I am incredibly grateful to Wesley Verhoeve for sharing his knowledge and teaching me how to tell my story.

Over-creating

I took several versions of the Lisianthus flowers, all against a black background. It's a challenge to save the highlights of the white petals AND save the shadows of the dark backdrop. There are compromises. But eventually, a color has to sit beside another color. A photograph has to leave my mind's vision and make it's way onto the page. Making something is a way to make a decision; it closes the loop of endless thoughts. This feels good. It lets my mind rest. Because not every problem is a life or death choice.

I love this take from Ayushi Thakkar on how over creating can help calm over thinking:

over creating helps because volume lowers the emotional stakes.

one unfinished paragraph can feel like evidence of failure when it is the only paragraph. ten attempts become practice. one abandoned idea can haunt a person for months. a folder full of fragments feels more like a working mind. the overthinker tends to make every act carry too much meaning, so creating more spreads the meaning out. each attempt stops being a referendum on talent and becomes one item in a larger body of evidence.

Self-trust

I’ve made progress in trusting myself. It’s not that I don’t value other people’s opinions and feedback; I do. But I have learned to consider whose opinion deserves access, what kind of access it gets, how deep I let it go, and whether it is actually wiser than my own knowing.

Take a Real Break

Really good advice from Awaken Joy by Barbara Heffernan for those times when I am overwhelmed and overloaded. Take a real break.

This is the tool people most resist. When you are overwhelmed and overloaded, taking an hour away from everything feels like the last thing you should be doing. It is not.

Stress makes the brain single-minded. It activates only a narrow band of what is available to us, and it is exactly the wrong state for problem-solving. Solving problems requires the whole brain working — memory, intuition, emotional processing, and rational thinking all integrating together. A real break is what brings the whole brain back online.

The break needs to be a genuine one: a walk in nature, playing an instrument, time spent doing something that is actually fun and feeds your soul. Scrolling on your phone or watching television does not produce the same effect. Consider this both permission and a gentle instruction. Go for a swim. Go for a walk. Listen to music. Take whatever kind of break genuinely restores you. When you return to the work, you will be more productive and better able to tackle what is on your list — not despite having taken the break, but because of it.

Sunflower Petals and Strawflowers