Huntington Beach 3

Posted on October 29, 2002 in Photography Photos

Click on the Picture

I’ve noticed something — and it might be a good thing, too: I’ve been posting fewer of the pictures that I take. When I studied photography at UC San Francisco Extension a few years back, I remember an instructor telling us that the mark of a fine photographer was knowing which pictures to give up on.

In this Huntington Beach series, I’ve run a few pictures through Paint Shop Pro and thrown out quite a few after trying to correct their problems. I may be too much in love with the novelty of panoramas, still, to apply the same high standards to the editing of these, but as I make more I do not doubt that I will be able to turn my back on the weaker ones.

It still feels painful to reject a picture that I thought had promise when I took it. The noted street photographer Garry Winogrand used to store exposed film for six months or more before he’d develop it. Then, as he looked at the contact sheets, he’d choose the best — utterly without memory of the hopes he’d had when the shots came into his view finder.

Winogrand’s technique consisted of walking down a street gripping his Leica, taking photos as fast as he could without breaking his stride, and then, as I just mentioned, waiting several months before developing and editing the proof sheets. He photographed continuously, stopping only to change film. A student once asked him about the pictures he missed while he reloaded. Winogrand replied “There are no pictures when I’m not looking.”

All of these appeared in my camera simply because I was looking. The same holds true for any of you: your pictures and your words exist because of you. You are more than the camera: you’re the eyes that you’ve lent the world.

Thank you for seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling and, moreover, for writing and showing us.

Book: The Uneasy Streets of Garry Winogrand