Editing Before Shooting
Posted by Curt Franklin on 22 September, 2007
In our last class, we talked a great deal about editing in terms of deciding which shots to take, and which shots to use. Earlier, we had discussed things like angles and framing — the mechanics of taking photos that don’t simply tell stories, they tell stories people want to see. I began thinking of these issues as editing before the shots are taken: you decide before you start on the types of shots you’ll want (detail, medium, scene-setting, with other people, with equipment or tools, showing action — you begin to understand). You can’t know precisely which images are going to happen in front of your lens, but it’s a good bet that you won’t be in position to capture the images unless you’ve done the work to plan your shots.
I kept thinking about the issue of being in position for images when I looked at Mark Hancock’s blog. (Thanks to Mindy McAdams(*) for pointing me in his direction.) When I see photos like this shot from a high-school football game, I know that the photographer had to have an idea of where action might happen, so he was set up in the right place. The same is true for many of the shots in his Hurricane Humberto slide show. There’s obviously a lot of driving around and looking for images, but many of the shots show a great deal of planning. It’s a good selection that couldn’t have happened without editing before, during, and after shooting.
(*) CORRECTION: In the original post, Mindy McAdams name was mis-spelled. Thanks to Prof. McAdams for pointing out the incorrect spelling. I apologize for the error. CF
amescua said
To tell you the truth, I did not like hurricane’s images very much… I just liked the flooded highway one, the worried farmer and one or two more… I find most of them dull, maybe because of the small size, did you like them?
Curt Franklin said
There were several that I did find dull, and I noticed that the shots I liked best were those that I suspect were more carefully considered before the shutter was tripped. This won’t always be the case, but I’m a big believer in thinking about shots before you pull out the camera. Preparation lets you take advantage of luck.
I’ll have to think about the size question: I know that, in general, I prefer larger photos to smaller, but I don’t know whether pulling the images to a larger size will make them more compelling.