What's worth keeping?

We're moving to Boston.  Long story.

As with any move, we're going through and weeding out material possessions we don't need anymore.  And that goes for the archives as well.  When I was younger I felt that old images, like fine wine, might become more valuable over time, and therefore it was imprudent to throw old pictures away, even when they didn't "make the cut".  You never know about the future.  That's a foundational principle of stock photography.

I benefitted from this philosophy a few times.  

The Goodyear Blimp hasn't looked like this in decades.  At the time I took the picture, though, it was nothing special.

And who in their right mind would ever take a picture of a phone booth?  Surely these will be around forever!

Will this image from the Welcome Home Desert Storm Troops Parade from 1992 become more valuable over time? 

How about this image from the 1994 Northridge, California Earthquake?

How about this picture of actor McLean Stevenson and sportscaster Scott St. James I took at a celebrity golf tournament in 1986?

Here's where the image appreciated in value.  The infamous "CCCP" initials in the Kremlin building (left) are gone now (right).  It's as if the letters were Photoshopped out, but in real life. :-)

Another example where keeping photos that didn't make the cut saved me.  Here's a picture I took during "Bubble Festival" at the local science museum:

Great shot, right?  I wanted to use it for the cover of the RX100 VI book (since that's the camera I used to take that picture), but there was a problem: The book covers are vertical, and this is a horizontal composition.

Good thing I didn't delete my rejects.  I found this image:

I darkened it, rotated it a bit, and then put it below the black banner, fooling your brain into thinking it was all one image:

Tricky, no?  Now that you know what I did, you can see some proportion problems and evidence of the clone stamp work I had to do too. :-)

So you can see why I kept everything; because you just never know.  After 40 years, though, you tend to have a slightly better idea of what's NOT going to appreciate in value.  That's why for the last month I've been going through bin after bin of the archives, digitizing and purging the physical artifacts.  (Or in some cases, just purging.)  All the pictures I took in my first trip to Israel in 1978?  Gone.  All the pictures from the Namibia trip that never made the final cut?  Tossed.  You get the idea.  I filled five large trashcans with stuff.  

Some jewels surfaced, like these videos of Professor Freeman Dyson giving lectures at JPL when he was a visiting scientist.  (Or me during that same era talking about how I was able to make a crappy IBM PC behave like the expensive graphics workstations to visualize spacecraft data in real time.)  (Or this, documenting the children's play I wrote the music for back in the day.)  

Rightly or wrongly, I still keep negatives.  Mostly because they take up little space; and because they've been proofed and organized; and because scans from negs are of infinitely better quality than scanning prints (see example below).  Plus, a few times a year I tend to dive in to digitize a particular image from an event which has suddenly become relevant.  (Like when I dug up those substandard images of Siegfried and Roy a few months ago after Roy died.)  

Negative Scan vs. Photographing a print.  Which do you think is better?  (Click on image to make it larger.)

Images of family members are a different story.  This is probably the first time in history when people are flooded with too many images of their family and times together.  Even images that never get "picked" for sharing with others have value to me; they jog a pleasant neuron when they come up on my screensaver.  And disk space has never been cheaper, so the motivation to purge digital files is weak.

So what's worth keeping?  After the agonizing process of throwing away perfectly good images (knowing I had better ones already scanned), after analyzing everything I threw away, I concluded that shots that document your surroundings (building interiors, quaint architecture found in travel) have significantly less value than photos of people you are close to, and the closer they are to a classic snapshot (faces placed according to the rule of thirds, good light, natural expressions).  Better still are classic snapshots that serve also as an environmental portrait - documenting a person in the environment in which they thrive.

Capturing a genuine expression can trump non-ideal light.

Another lesson I am constantly reminded of is the importance of curating your work - pick your best ones as you shoot, label and save them in a special area so you won't become overwhelmed when it comes time to choose good ones of family members or events.  And get them in printed form, like photo books or pictures on the wall - as many photographers have pointed out over the years, a photo doesn't mean anything if it's sitting on a hard drive gathering dust.  A printed picture is forever; whereas an instagram picture is something like 0.8 seconds.  (Which is ironic insight given just how many physical images I've been getting rid of...)

(I wonder if Steve McCurry has this problem.)

In the Pipeline

Fujifilm X-T4 is now Finished and available in all formats!  

Sony A7S III - Hopefully by December, but the move will delay the release.  It will be a majorly different book considering the new menu system and more advanced video features.  Pre-order yours at a discount.  

Olympus E-M1 III - First part end of October; final book in December.  You can pre-order this one at a discount too.

Sony A7C - Haven't received mine yet; can't speculate.  But I'll be writing about it.

Virtual Photo Club Talk

I've now done about a dozen virtual Photo Club talks over Zoom, and they have been a hit!  The most popular talks (by far) have been my lecture and demonstration of wireless flash, and also my RAW vs. JPG sermon which changes a LOT of people's minds regarding what they thought was true.  I can do this for your photo club too!  Have your club president get in touch with me.  Gary at Friedman Archives dot com .

Until next time,

Yours Truly, Gary Friedman

More things digitized.  Carl Sagan was president of the Planetary Society in 1989 when Voyager 2 did its flyby of Neptune, the last planet for its scheduled journey. Dr. Sagan threw a "Goodbye Voyager" party at JPL, hired musician Chuck Berry (who did the duck walk), and gave everyone who worked on this project a commemorative coin. Mine is number 881 out of 5000.