The winning image was a clear favorite – and one of mine as well. The second place image was definitely in my top 5 as well as the image of Times Square – and many picked that one as their first choice.
I personally found this to be a very interesting experiment – it’s not something I’ve ever done before – other than with other editors – usually 1-2 photo editors at most. The largest group of people I’ve ever had to do an edit with me was at National Geographic. There were a little over a dozen editors in the projection room – all weighing in on what would make it into the magazine… Presenting one’s photographs to a room of such heavyweights is an experience I won’t soon forget…
Although I haven’t had that much time to truly analyze the results – it did re-affirm a few things for me that I’ll expound on after the slideshow below…
The beauty of photography and with art in general – is that everyone experiences it in their own unique way.
When I was in my teens – I never used to understand big-name artists who refused to define their art work – or refused to have others do so for them. They liked to have other people interpret their work individually. Over the years my opinion has evolved. As I got the chance to work for large papers and magazines – I got the chance to have my images be seen by a wide variety of people, and I learned that people found beauty or interest in images for so many different reasons (beyond what the photographer originally intended.) Read the rest of this entry »
ALRIGHT FOLKS, THE TALLIES ARE IN. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO KEEP LEAVING COMMENTS, BUT I’VE STARTED COUNTING THE VOTES AS OF 5PM PST.
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Last week I flew for an entire day over my favorite skyline in the world: New York City. I shot 5,952 frames from sunrise to sunset on assignment for a client. You can read a very nice piece about it written by Matt Buchanan on Gizmodo.
BUT – here’s where this gets a little different – I’d like to give you a chance to help me edit the best images down from my top 55 – down to the top 3…
I’ve been editing images (and working with editors) for more than 20 years.
What always amazes me is how my preference for images changes with time – and that an edit that I do a few years from now will very likely be completely different than the one I do today. That’s why I never delete a SINGLE image that I shoot.
Therefore, I’m curious to see what other people think – in this case what YOU THINK (and see.)
Editing 5,900+ images down to the top 1% is relatively easy – editing the top 55 down to the top 3 is extremely difficult.
I find is that the final editing process can be EXTREMELY subjective. One’s top 3 will change from hour to hour – one day to the next – all depending on your mood.
So here’s where you come in… go to thru the gallery below and leave comments on your favorite three images in the comments section of this blog (use the filename as reference.)
I went back to New York City last week to do an aerial photo shoot for a private client. Here’s a little clip from that flight of us flying over the city.
On a related note, I had a great lunch with my friend Scott Bourne a few weeks ago – and he mentioned something to me that at the time surprised me quite a bit. He told me that most of the people out there didn’t know that my background was in photography – according to him, most know me for my film/video work with HDDSLRS – Reverie, Nocturne, First Look and others …
I found that quite interesting given that I have 20 years of experience in the world of photography. To be honest, when he mentioned this to me it totally threw me for a loop – but it also made a bit of sense given what’s happened in the past two years with this blog and the photo/video world in general. It led to a very interesting conversation on how one’s perceptions of who one is – can sometimes be quite different than how people perceive you from the outside world…
I’ve caught people saying that I’m no longer a still photographer now – and that I have “moved on” into the world of filmmaking. While I have definitely spent a greater percentage of my time in the motion world over the past 2 years – I definitely haven’t “left” photography. In fact these past two years have made me miss shooting stills in a way that I haven’t felt in a long time – and I have some big still projects coming up that I’m extremely excited about. If I had to break it down – I’d simply say that the world of print is going through a very tough time right now – and the editorial (magazine/newspaper) budgets through an even tougher time… as they improve and hopefully come back to being close to what they once were – I can see myself doing a LOT more still photography. In fact I’m not waiting! I’m already in the process of working on 3 different short and long-term still projects.
