But what do we do with those?
Because I rarely place photographs into albums, I don't really have to deal with
the problem of what to do with those that don't find a home within them. For me
it was easy - they all simply got stuffed into envelopes,
with no particular order or master plan. But it seems to me that an unavoidable
corollary of saving particular photographs is parting with others. I know that
at least some people actually do this. On one photographers' discussion forum
(from over four years ago) we can read the reports of numerous photographers (some
are undoubtedly professionals) who tell us how many shots they save in relation
to how many they throw out. The
thread I followed, for instance, started with a confession:
I've just been going through my latest batch of pictures, tossing
out the rubbish, and I started to wonder how much other photographers throw
away. At the moment, I'm dumping between 25 and 32 shots per roll which, given
that these are all snapshots, means that I'm keeping up to 30% of my shots.
To my mind, getting rid of almost 70% of everything that this photographer shoots
is an amazing feat of self-control. Particularly if we read the continuation of
that same paragraph:
Just because I keep a shot doesn't mean I think it's good, I might just want it for the memory of a nice day.
In other words, even when he takes the desire for memorabilia
into account, he's still willing to part with most of what he shoots.
I doubt that we do this in our family, though I really don't know. We still have
a traditional film camera, but Tzippi is in charge of it, and though I see the
photos that come back after development, and then once again after they've been
placed in an album, I don't know what's been done with those that didn't make
the album cut. There's probably a shoebox that I don't know about that's home
for all those photos that weren't considered suitable for an album.
Go to: The pleasure is in the doing, or
Go to: Basically, it's a feeling, or
Go to: To hold in our hands.