Tim Gruber and Jenn Ackerman use both photography and video to tell stories for editorial and commercial clients. 
The best thing about editing is coming back to old work and finding photos you passed over in the initial edit.
The worst? The pain of looking at a lot of bad photos. Must rest my eyes.
A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I’m sure every photographer knows this feeling, but today I hate my work. Yesterday I may have liked it, but it doesn’t matter much because today I hate it.
As the summer has progressed I’ve felt like I’ve been riding an emotional elevator when it comes to dealing with our prison project.
Some days I’m proud of the work I see hanging on our walls from the prison and other days I hate every single image up there. I guess it also boils down to the idea of feeling a lot of pressure to make sure we don’t let anyone down with this project.
The simple fact is this is the most time I’ve ever spent working on a project and probably the most time I’ll ever spend on a project non-stop like this. Short of moving into the prison, which Jenn and I actually thought of doing. We have lived and breathed this project daily and sometimes with “toxic” results to our sanity. Time off is a wonderful and needed thing.
The warden retires in less than a week and I want nothing more than this piece to be a thoughtful thank you to a man that has instilled in us so much faith and confidence. For us to walk freely inside an institution like this and doing it with cameras tells you the level of trust and confidence this man has in us. The staff, inmates, and frankly sometimes I find it amazing.
Now with only days left in the prison I’m hopeful that in six months, a year, ten years, or however long it takes us to produce this piece that it will all be worth it. Not for our sake cause it’s already been worth it, but for the sake of everyone who has made this summer possible.
People visting our home might find it a little strange to find our walls
cluttered with photos from our project, but it serves as a nice way to know
what we’ve shoot and what we still need to work on. This is our project road map
from much earlier in the summer.
When I started the project on mental illness in prison, I was hoping that a lot of people outside of the photo world would have the opportunity to see it.
Although it has only been published on my website at this point, I am seeing how something can go “viral”. When the project first launched at the end of March, I had a lot of hits from the photo community and while I was happy to see that other photographers were looking at the project, the site is now circulating the mental health and news blogospheres.
Thanks to the Internet, other people have done a great job of marketing this project. It really is amazing how one blog will post a link and then another blogger will link to it and so on. And while some sites I am sure are seeing hundreds of thousands of hits on a project, I am pretty happy that now more than 35,000 people have seen my project.
So thank you to those bloggers who are helping to spread this project around and to those visitors who are kind enough to respond to the piece.
I’ve been spending some time looking at new work the past couple days and find it interesting how different photographers edit and present their work. For example a lot of photographers doing the portrait thing for magazines seem to use generic titles for their portfolios such as Portfolio 1, Portfolio 2, etc.
I recall reading somewhere that when using generic titles you’re less likely to offend the visitors to your site if your photos don’t match watch their perception of the title is?
That’s a different post though. Back to editing.
If you’re like me you’re never truly satisfied with the edit of anything you do.
Change this. Try that.
Only to revert back to my first edit and question what I’m missing.
We all know how hard it can be to edit your work. Damn near impossible. Even worse is when you get an edit from a friend and they tell you to ditch your favorite image. That’s like asking a 7 year old to give all his Halloween candy to his little sister. It’s hard to cope with.
Editing is an intimidating and ruthless process and one I never look forward to. Much like my Grandma’s garden you need to hoe out those weeds and yes sometimes that weed might be disguised as your favorite image. Although if you expect to have a garden of roses rather than an oasis of weeds or in our case a collection of singles with no narrative it needs to happen.
Editing at its worse has the power to make people cry. At its best it can make you feel like a chef in the kitchen. Just the right ingredients and watch a masterpiece take form
As is often the case less is more. What is this image adding? Is every picture advancing the story? How’s the pacing? The visual variety and impact? Are all my images quiet? I struggle with that one a lot. Does it read like a musical score? Or is it on par with my cooking? Flat and lifeless.
Hemingway once wrote a story in just six words: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” and claimed that it was some of his best work.
Let Hemingway be your guide and edit tight.
After a few days of trying to gather up images for College Photographer of the Year(CPOY) I don’t know left from right anymore or good images from bad. Although in my case it’s been easier to spot bad images since I seem pretty good at making those.
The only given it feels like is that the more you look at your work the more you hate it. It doesn’t take long and all your weaknesses seem to start leaking out of every crevice.
As Melissa pointed out on the APAD blog her favorite post on the new The Photo Editor blog is one that deals with the idea that everyone takes bad pictures. (You should have both blogs on your RSS feed if you don’t already.)
As many people say you’re only as good as your weakest image.
Here are a few images from a project I was working on last spring that I’m trying to edit into a tight essay.
I’m calling it American Trucker. It’s a personal exploration and commentary on an occupation(truck driving) that’s fascinated me since I was a kid.
Yep you guessed it. That’s me as a wee tot not knowing that in time I’d explore a topic I spent a decent amount of my childhood around.
The first question I asked when trying to define documentary photography was what is the difference between documentary photography and photography in its broadest term? Aren’t all photographs visually documenting something? Aren’t all photographs visual explorations and visual expressions? Other than commercial, when does a photograph begin to fit into the documentary category?
Documentary in its broadest terms is to use documents as evidence. Ok. So starting from that point, documentary photography would then be using visual documents as evidence. Right? Perhaps we could say it is visually presenting the facts of a person, place or event…..facts???? or portions of facts? Perhaps it is the intent of a documentary photographer to record some aspects of reality. Perhaps it is the intent behind the photography that defines one as documentary.
According to film theorist Paul Rotha, “Documentary defines not subject or style, but approach. It justifies the use of every known technical artifice to gain its effect on the spectator.”
It this definition given by Rotha that resounds most with me – one that addresses the intent and approach of documentary photography. With that said, documentary photography has many purposes: to record, reveal or preserve, to persuade or promote, to analyze or interrogate and to express.