Photo documentation

A small detail could become something like a challenge for us photographers.

Article pubilshed on 2018/07/15
and last updated on 2018/12/07
This post is assigned to the categories: Documentation

This dilemma is familiar to us photographers: Let’s pretend you are on a wonderful vacation and you have your family, friends or partner with you.
You all feel good and you’re experiencing a bunch of great impressions. But to be quite clear:
The reason why you and your fellows are there is not necessarily photography. You didn’t come there to take pictures. The focus’s on the common experience.
What should you do as a photographer now? Should you just take pictures that are worthwhile from an artistic point of view? Which would perfectly fit into your portfolio?
I tell you what you shouldn’t: Do not make the experience bad for everyone just because you’re looking for perspectives and staging photo scenes all the time.
In situations like that it is less about artistic photography, but rather about photo documentation.
You want to preserve those memories. Even if those pictures may not be that exciting or demanding to others.
What is the right thing to do? Smash the shutter button without thinking too much. Two things to consider right after such a dangerous sentence:
First of all, artistically staged images should never be neglected. After all, you’re in a nice place. How often do you think this possibility will come back? But still, don’t you get too stiff.
It’s OK to photograph a person centered. It’s OK to belittle claims.
Second, too many shots are not always the wisest thing to do. A lot of pictures also want to be looked through and sorted out. I only advise machine gun mode when unplanned moments happen that you must not miss. Something like a wedding event.

So here you are back home. Luggage full of preserved memories.
I personally treat my pictures according to a well-rehearsed scheme: After the import, they are sorted out, evaluated, roughly processed.
Good ones are marked to be edited in more detail later on. Even better ones are marked not to get dusty with other fellow images on the hard disk, perhaps to be put in the spotlight.
I am sure you can imagine this takes a lot of effort. If those images are not artistic ones, the workflow does not even function properly.
On the basis of what criteria should one evaluate such pictures? Low from a photographic point of view, high from an emotional point of view? Don’t bother to think about.
The solution to this dilemma lies in accepting documentary images as such and not treating them with the same means as artistic ones. They should be sorted out and then exported into an appropriate archive.

Here are three impressions from Fuerteventura to make sure you don’t go away empty-handed after reading this text-intensive article. In Fuerteventura I took a ton of pictures that I would have died at if I had edited them all individually.
In this sheer mass, however, were a few good-looking candidates. At first I have presented more than these pictures, but I decided to move them into a separate gallery.
This might be a little detail for some people, but could become a challenge for others.

It’s crazy what kind of things can concern you. I hope the content was not too abstract. Sometimes I don’t know if the things that bother me are even ripe for debate.
I can imagine that some people might say: Compadre, don’t you worry that much! At least that’s what my spouse tell me all this time.
Speaking of ripeness: You should click here. Go ahead. Be brave!

Anyways, you know the drill. If you have thoughtful friends who might also be interested in such texts, share the post, share that post aaand share the post again.
Thanks a bunch for spending your time. If there is still some of your time left and you are not bored, take a glance at the archives section.