Reading your own photo

Learning goal

You will be able to look at the photos you shot yourself with the attention you give someone else's work, and with as neutral an eye as possible. You will notice that the memories of the moment of the shoot make a frame look more or less valuable than it is, and distance yourself from this load by waiting a while before choosing frames. You will build a review checklist made of technical, narrative and sequence headings, and defamiliarise the frames to your own eye by seeing them small, upside down or in black and white. You will turn the order of describing, interpreting and evaluating that you applied to someone else in the previous lesson onto your own frames, and learn to let go of a frame you put effort into but which adds nothing to the sequence. You will add separate items to your checklist for frames with people in them: you will ask whether detail is there in the faces, whether skin is consistent throughout the sequence, how light is shared among the people, and whether you showed the frames to the person themselves.

The question

Your friend sits in front of the hundreds of frames left from the bakery project's forty mornings. For the module project, they will choose only six frames. Each time they look at a frame they remember that morning: how the cold numbed their fingers, the heat from the oven's mouth hitting their face, the moment the baker laughed at a joke. These memories make every frame valuable; choosing six frames means letting go of thirty, and they can't let go of any.

When they open them again in the morning after a night's sleep, everything is reversed. The frames that looked valuable yesterday look ordinary today, even bad. They don't know which to trust: yesterday's excitement, or today's disappointment? At the club they can comfortably comment on other people's sequences, but they can't look at their own work with the same eye. How do you judge your own work objectively? How do you know a frame is good, independently of what you felt while shooting it?

Context

In the giving and receiving critique lesson you learned to look at a photo by first describing, then interpreting, and last evaluating (Lesson 23.6). The methods of sifting out the useful frames from a shoot were the topic of the culling lesson too (Lesson 17.3). This lesson combines the two and applies them to the hardest place: your own work.

Looking at your own work is harder than looking at someone else's, because the photographer doesn't just see the frame, they remember it. A viewer sees in the frame only the image on the screen; the photographer, on the other hand, also sees everything left outside that image: the sound, the smell, the cold, the waiting. This difference requires borrowing someone else's eye when judging your own frames. This lesson also closes the module; you will choose the module's project, a mini story series of six frames, with this reading.

Simple explanation

Why can't you see your own work?

Memory bias is the memories, feelings and effort belonging to the moment of the shoot getting in the way of a photographer's judgment of a frame, even though they don't show in the frame itself. A frame for which you got up at four in the morning and waited in the cold is, for the viewer, only an oven's mouth; for you, it is a whole morning's effort. This load can make a frame look more valuable than it is. The opposite happens too: a frame during which you felt disappointment while shooting may actually be the strongest frame of the sequence, but the memory of that moment overshadows it.

Memory bias doesn't disappear, but it lightens with time. A cooling-off period is the waiting time left after a shoot before choosing and judging the frames. A period such as a week lets the fresh feelings of the shoot recede and lets you see the frame more as it is on the screen. Waiting isn't avoiding a decision; it is postponing the decision to a moment when feelings are less involved. The disappointment your friend felt the next day is memory bias too; a single day isn't enough, because this time tiredness and expectation come into play. After a week, the frames look neither as bright as yesterday nor as dull as today.

What does the checklist look at?

A review checklist is a list of questions asked in order when judging your own frames, putting criteria in place of feeling. The list can be gathered under three headings. The technical heading asks measurable questions: is the sharpness where it is wanted, are the bright areas clipped, is the horizon tilted, is there detail in the shadows? The narrative heading asks what the frame says: what does this frame tell, does it give an answer to the project's question, what would a viewer understand seeing this frame alone? The sequence heading asks about the frame's relationship with the other frames: what task does it take on in the sequence, is there another frame saying the same thing, does it fit the sequence in terms of light and color?

For frames with people in them, separate items are added to the list. Is there detail in the faces, especially in the eyes and at the corners of the lips? Is the same person's skin in a consistent tone throughout the sequence, or does it shift from light to light? In the sequence, does the light always fall on the same people, do some always stand at the edges? Did you show the frames to the person themselves; do they recognize themselves in these frames? These questions make it possible to see whether the dark-skinned baker's face has again stayed in shadow, whether a light-skinned customer's forehead has been clipped, and whom the sequence shows as a subject and whom as a figure.

How do you defamiliarise your own eye?

Defamiliarisation is the techniques of showing your own frames differently from their usual form so that you can look at them as if seeing them for the first time. Seeing the frames very small, the size of a fingertip, erases the details and leaves only the frame's main structure, the distribution of light and weight. Turning a frame upside down makes recognizing the subject harder and makes the eye look at shapes, lines and balance. Seeing it in black and white removes the appeal of color and shows whether tone and composition work on their own. Describing the frames out loud is applying the previous lesson's description step to yourself: saying "a bright oven mouth at the top left, a flour-dusted counter at the bottom right" lets what is on the screen speak, not the memory bias.

A darling frame is a frame the photographer is very attached to because of effort or feeling but which serves no purpose in the sequence, or whose point another frame makes better. Every project has frames of this kind, and letting them go is the hardest decision. The checklist's sequence heading makes these frames visible: of two frames taking on the same task, which is stronger? When choosing this frame, putting it side by side with the other frame in the same task shows the difference to the naked eye; often the loved frame has come forward because it carries the warmth of the memory, not because of the light or the moment in the frame. You don't have to delete the darling frame; putting it in a separate folder makes taking it out of the sequence easier, and knowing you can come back to it whenever you want makes the decision lighter.

Visual evidence

You leave the bakery project's frames unopened for a week. Then you open all the frames at small size in a grid. Thirty frames, with their details erased; only patches of light and shadows. Twelve frames with a strong structure stand out at once. You turn these into black and white and also look at them once upside down; the structure of three of them falls apart.

You look at the remaining nine frames with the checklist. You see that the oven mouth frame you shot on the coldest morning and love so much says the same thing as the flour-dusted frame two frames later; you put it in a separate folder. When you come to the items about people, you notice that in six of the nine frames the baker's face has stayed in shadow; you take the two frames you shot in window light into the selection. You show the last six frames to the baker. They recognize themselves most in the frame where they hand bread to the elderly neighbor; that frame becomes the sequence's closing.

Common mistakes

Summary

Looking at your own work is hard, because the memories, feelings and effort of the moment of the shoot, that is, memory bias, get into the judgment even though they don't show in the frame; a cooling-off period of a week lightens this load, and a review checklist made of technical, narrative and sequence headings puts criteria in place of feeling. Defamiliarising the frames by seeing them small, upside down, in black and white and describing them out loud makes it possible to borrow a viewer's eye, and makes it easier to let go of a darling frame that says the same thing. In frames with people in them, the list also asks about detail in the faces, the consistency of skin, whom the light falls on, and whether the person has seen their own frame.

Mini assignment

In this assignment you will build the module's project, a mini story series of six photos, and choose its frames with this lesson's reading.

1. From a project you have run in this module or newly started, gather at least thirty frames about a person, a place or a process.
2. Leave the frames unopened for a week; then look at them small, in black and white and upside down, and set aside the strongest ten to twelve frames.
3. Apply a review checklist made of technical, narrative and sequence headings to the rest; in frames with people, also ask about detail in the faces, the consistency of skin, and whom the light brings forward and whom it leaves behind. Put the darling frames in a separate folder.
4. Choose six frames and arrange them in an order made of an opening, details, a climax and a closing; write each frame's task in one sentence. If there is a person in the sequence, show them the frames and note whether they recognize themselves.

Check yourself

• When choosing the frames, were you able to separate the memories of the moment of the shoot from the frame itself?
• Does each of the six frames add something different to the sequence?
• Do the people in the sequence appear as subjects in terms of their faces, skin and position, and have they seen the frames?

Glossary

Mini quiz

1. A photographer thinking that a frame for which they waited in the cold at four in the morning is the best in the sequence is an example of what?

• A) Cooling-off period
• B) Memory bias
• C) Defamiliarisation
• D) Review checklist

2. What does seeing frames at very small size make possible?

• A) Checking sharpness
• B) Correcting colors
• C) Preparing frames for a large print
• D) Erasing details and showing the frame's main structure and balance

3. Of a pair of frames taking on the same task, what is the most suitable decision for the weaker one the photographer is very attached to?

• A) Putting it in a separate folder and taking it out of the sequence
• B) Keeping both in the sequence
• C) Removing the stronger one
• D) Deleting both

4. The checklist shows that in six of the sequence's nine frames the dark-skinned baker's face has stayed in shadow. What is done?

• A) Making the shadowed frames even darker
• B) Removing the baker's frames from the sequence
• C) Taking into the selection the frames where their face appears in light and with its detail, and rethinking whom the sequence shows as a subject
• D) Doing nothing

Answers

1. B — The effort and memory of the moment of the shoot don't show in the frame but get into the judgment.
2. D — Small size erases detail and makes the eye look at the distribution of light and weight.
3. A — Putting the darling frame in a separate folder makes taking it out of the sequence easier and keeps a return open.
4. C — Who always stays in shadow is a question of representation; detailed frames in the light build the balance.

Summary card

• Memory bias doesn't show in the frame but gets into the judgment.
• Wait a week before choosing.
• Use a checklist with technical, narrative and sequence headings.
• Look small, upside down, in black and white, and by describing out loud.
• Put the darling frame in a separate folder; check people's faces, skin and position.

Bridge to the next lesson

When the six-frame sequence was finished, the baker made a request: a short video for the bakery's founding anniversary. Your friend now knew light, composition and building a sequence; they thought it would be easy. When they pressed the camera's video button, though, everything changed: the image in their hand was shaking, the hum of the oven was drowning out the baker's voice, and the three-minute recording just wouldn't end. The moment that freezes in a single frame was flowing away here. Why do photographers struggle with video? The next lesson tells about the dimensions of movement, sound and duration added when moving from photography to video.