Photography 101

[BigV]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

yeah picasa is great. links.
98,000? Buy a video camera. That's nearly 70 minutes of movie at 24 frames per second.

At one frame per second you've got 68 hours of movie there hombre.

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

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Remember a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link, and argument is only as strong as it's weakest point, a portfolio of 98,000 images is the product of a very soft heart. You need more ruthlessness.
--snip

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

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98 k or 98 million, they are yours, and you have the right to keep them, until they pry your picassa password from your cold dead hands...--snip

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

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But they are good. Very good. Do you really have 97, 964 more?

This 98k number discussion has been bugging me, so I wish to respond.

Yes. I do have over 98k files in my Pictures folder. At least when I posted that number it was at 98,024. Some were subdirectories, some were movies, some were index files, I wasn't discriminating much. By now that number is higher still. I shoot pictures every day.

And I was aiming for maximum inclusiveness when I made the index of images for the mosaic program so it has the maximum possible choices from which to make the mosaics.

But it is a little misleading for a couple reasons. One, a big chunk of those pictures were taken by a robot, not me. They were exposures taken one minute apart for assembly into a time lapse movie of a construction project. That accounts for about 33k of the files.

Also, I recovered SonofV, the Elder's hd for him some time ago, and those picture files make up a big chunk of that 98k, approximately 18k files. That leaves me to account for about 46k images, rounding down. I took most of them. Only several hundred are cataloged. (Almost) All of them are well filed in my tree structure, explained elsewhere. Still, that's a lot of pictures.

I'm going to address footfootfoot's blush inducing remarks in a little bit, but for now I will plainly answer his question. No, the other 97,964 aren't as good as the ones I showed him. I probably have a generous double handful I consider equally good, but at max, only a few per thousand.

Which brings me to why I take (and keep) so many images. Let me draw you a picture...

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

propose you upload a set of 36 consecutive photos to picassa or some such and we can have a discussion about actual images and not *your relationship* to those images.

This was really really hard. Not only am I loathe to discard images, I have to say, there are very few images that I don't have a relationship with. (my language skills are fading here....) I see things differently when it comes to the pictures. I do see them as individual images, but in the context of the memories they stimulate when I view them. The best way I can describe it is that they're much like musical notes or chords, or even phrases. The pictures belong together just as a guitar riff belongs in a song, and a song to an album. You might recognize a particular riff, but if it's one you really like, you think of the whole song when you hear it. The pictures evoke a similar experience with me. I don't just collect ringtone samples of my favorite songs, I have the whole song.

Your compliments are enormously gratifying, footfootfoot (and others who have responded privately--THANK YOU). But those individual, contextless images are for me like the "DUM dum, DUM dum" made with a cello voice. I hear that and I think of Jaws. Each of those pictures (my best work) is like a great musical hook. It can be admired by itself, but it needs context to permit its fullest expression.

I've reread this post and I'm only partly convinced I've communicated my thoughts. It's not an excuse, it's a burden, frankly. But one I don't mind.