Editing Images

Having the idea in mind that I would be making a book, I had to edit down hundreds of images. It’s not like editing down images to arrange as a series of prints, but editing so that there is an eb and flow to a narrative dictated by a book. Because I already had an idea in mind that the book would take the viewer deeper into the archive, this meant that I could break the book into different sections:

• archive as a whole
• story list
• prints
• articles collected
• letters
• diaries

Firstly I edited the images one by one, staring them between 1-4, with four being the highest and one being the lowest. This was so that I could immediately rule out images which were out of focus. Because I took more than one photograph of each object, it meant that I could select the best one. From then I looked at the fours and chose the best ones which I thought would work well in the work.

 

I knew that I always wanted to have a picture of the archive on the wall and with the instruction by Jinx and the family, I was limited to how I shot this picture. Therefore I decided on this image immediately. This image has been used for my promotion and on my business cards so that there is a sense of identity.

Adobe Bridge – George Rodger Archive

Editing pictures down for the book was extremely fluid. There was always the base images I always knew I wanted: of the archive, backs of prints, a diary entry and various letters. However, it was filling the gaps between these images to make the book flow which was more difficult, making the transitions between the ‘chapters’ I had created to make a book that it long enough to be informative, but without showing too much that it is too long. From these chapter points I had looked at images to see what would work best: I wanted to make sure that the pictures kept a similar aesthetic with the warm earthy colours. I also understood that I needed to make rests for the book so that it wasn’t just page after page of a lot of information from extremely different artefacts. I played with page breaks heavily to slow the rhythm of the book down. At the same time I realised that I couldn’t solely use my 5* images; they were strong on their own but did not necessarily work together and so I paired weaker images which could give a more interesting dynamic.

With the book I also played with the closed and open aspects of letters. So on a spread on the right hand side would be a closed letter and on the left page once it was turned revealed the open letter. I thought that this worked well and transcribed a feeling of excitement and revelation for the viewer. Although it is manufactured in this way, it is as close as they would get to uncovering such letters.