But Not All Photographs I Take Are At The Same Level

Mark added the following comment to my blog on rules which referred to my article on Taking Your Photography To The Next Level

I do think that even though someone may obtain a coveted '6F' level - they still must be humble enough to accept they will make many 1A images. Of course, they don't have to show those to anyone...

Mark raises a very important point. Clearly not all images from a given photographer are of the same quality - were that the case we wouldn't agonize over which images to show - whether to the neighbour or to the submissions jury. This raises questions about percentages and so on. Perhaps it might be better for the photographer to assess his level based on images shot in the last year. Since even Ansel talked about 12 good images a year, this ought to be sufficient. Yet, what about photographers who most of their lives produced fairly ordinary images yet over a lifetime produced perhaps a dozen wonderful images, icons of photography as I called them in the article. I think of Andre Kertesz. He was inconsistent, yet is deservedly famous for the selection of images which were magnificent.

In the end I don't think I have an easy answer to the concern. 6F photographers as Mark calls them will almost certainly produce some 1A's on a given shoot, but most of the time there are enough images from any one assignment to produce admirable if not wonderful images.

When I went through the process of selecting images for illustrating the article on levels, you wouldn't be surprised to find out that I eliminated the 1A's and in fact spent some considerable time and thought into picking which images were strongest and which I would be prepared to have say - these are my images, this is what I can do.

I have no intention of letting people wander through my files and contact sheets to look at the duds.

Lets say then that a photographer is going to judge his level on his best photographs and that it seems reasonable to assume that he ought to have around three dozen images from which to pick the best 10 to actually show and be judged on.

Totally arbitrary numbers, I know, and it doesn't take into consideration the number of years the photographer has been shooting - but if a photographer moves up a level because he has been shooting 40 years instead of 2, who's going to care - remember the exercise was not about labelling yourself. Rather it is about finding out what it takes to move to the next level, so I think it doesn't really matter in the end what method one uses to select the images, how many or from what period of time.

You could even 'process' yourself twice - once for your absoluely best ever images and another from your typical best from a single project over several shoots. You'd come up with different answers but you would learn what it takes to move up the majority of your images while also learning what it would take to make your absolute best images better - and it almost certainly isn't the same lesson.