The Edit
a goodbye story on letting go of the digital archive
Dear Friends,
The story continues. My grandmother and me seem to have a thing. In this case, a long silk dress she once wore that I transformed into a cape to wear at openings and talks and other fun events.
Then came last year’s project Still, In Motion that included photographing vintage clothes dancing in our yard.1
If you read last week’s 13 Tons of Love you already know about the Cotillion Dress.
I laugh every time I see all these clothes dancing together, celebrating their freedom from dark closets and boxes in attics.
But what am I to do with the ‘outtakes’?
How can I let go of that joyous early spring day when the wind, a bunch of vintage fiber and I had such fun together in the yard?
Am I ready to delete them?
In many ways, The Edit is not complicated. Theoretically, a photographer methodically and unemotionally chooses one image over another, narrowing down to those that really work. In this case reducing my selection from seventy-two to twenty-one images.
It was easy enough to eliminate photographs whose compositions didn’t work or that were blurry in undesirable places. But what about all the rest?
Choosing has been a struggle my entire life. As an ADHD creative, I see possibilities, imagine different narratives and consider ways that an image or an object might be of use. And, when I get into a thing, I’m all in…
So when a glorious silk garment starts blowing in the wind with other hand-made clothes worn by people I’ve loved and lost, well…you can only imagine. I became ensnared, oblivious to the time and energy each image would eventually consume once downloaded onto my computer.2
And then, after a photo shoot, when I have time to sit with each photograph, I become entangled in a different way. The emotion I experience at the moment of creation is magnified when I see images in relationship to others. It then becomes really hard to decide what to keep and what to delete.
It seems dangerous to feel emotional about electronic files, but there it is.
So I wonder, like this cape hanging onto the branch…can I fly free? Can I let these digital bits and bytes go?
Yes. I must. Because if I don’t, it’s overwhelming and I’ll never get to the essence of what I really want to say. And lucky for you, dear reader, with tens of thousands of unedited images, there are many stories left to tell!
Anyway, back to this cape. As you can see, even though my final edit of three star images (above) included three close-up shadow photographs, I only used one in this post.
While not a ‘five-star send me to a show’ piece, this image transports me to a magical, transcendent moment, a transcendence that grows stronger over time.
Some images, it seems, are just more powerful than others. It’s not about technical prowess. It’s about the feeling a thing evokes. And, ironically, when something transcendent does presents itself, it is easier to pull back and choose.
It turns out that none of the photographs in the ‘final’ edit (above) says ‘5 stars’ to me. But together, they reveal an intimate conversation between silk, hydrangea shrub shadows and me.
So here they are, two-starred images above and the one-starred images below, now deleted from the Lightroom folder for this story and for the 1-stars, soon to be deleted from my entire catalogue.
Phew. I feel so much lighter and focused!
Edits happen in so many ways and at so many different stages in the process.
At one point I was thinking I’d include that silk green jacket and those blue silk pants in the 1-star group above. Their colors are jaw dropping, but decided they didn’t fit with this story. I’ll need to give them 2 stars, though, so they aren’t completely gone…
And then there were these two: Wind 1, Wind 2 or both? A moment of repose and then the ‘reveal’? I liked the slightly ‘bad-girl’ feel to Wind 2…but still, it wasn’t quite right.
Free at Last, though, really worked for me. The wind was strong enough and the cape brave enough to let go. The flapping fabric sounded like a sail when a boat changes tack. Gram and Pam both loved to sail and in this particular moment it felt as if I were taking these women for a ride they’d never imagined.
And in the process of creating that moment, I had also edited my memories, endowing this silk cape with a spirit that I may or may not have actually experienced or known, but which my subconscious desired.
The Edit is everywhere, allowing us to let go of and carry with us what we choose.
The clothes stayed out over night and the next day, I went back. It wasn’t just the cape that wanted freedom…Out came the playlist, a leotard and a clear day in spring…This is the piece that was ultimately included in my portfolio for Still, In Motion.3
So here it is, a year later. I realize that this freeing spirit of the wind applies to my work as well. There are times to hold on and times to let go. What I love most is the power of process.
Who knows what will emerge as I continue going back into the archive and seeing connections I didn’t originally know were there. Along the way, I hope to accomplish the ultimate edit and reduce the ~150,000 images in my Lightroom Library to 50,000 and then maybe 25,000…and then…Is it possible? I have no idea, but I’m ready to try.
Goodbye stories happen in many ways on many levels. I am in awe of this wondrous reciprocity between my work and my life.
Thank you for sharing your time and this space with me. Take care.
With cheers and gratitude for you being you,
Lyn
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Still, In Motion was the result of participating in the Atelier 37 through The Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA. The online group met for 9 months and was led by photographer Jennifer McClure. Here is a link to my portfolio from that project.
In my case, the energy involved has as much to do with my overall carbon footprint (either it takes tons of electricity to keep all those Cloud data centers cool or it takes lots of raw materials to make multiple hard drives on which to store the images) as it does the weight of knowing that there are just so many images in my collection and that if I don’t deal with them, who will? And even though I’ve rated the images and put many into collections, there are still way more than I need or want. While I’ve practiced uncluttering my closet, kitchen, basement and house, I haven’t been so attentive to my digital photographic archives... and it’s starting to feel like an unwelcome distraction. Also, given my ADHD, I have to keep my images close to me, on my laptop and back-up hard drives. The cloud programs confuse me. Things get lost. I don’t trust it…or myself.
I’ll have to show you the rest of the images for that second day another time. There are many…but for now I think it’s interesting how one set of images leads to another and then another…all in an entangled and connected web of explorations, adventures and play.