The key to growth as a photographer? Prints on the table! with David Wells

The best way to improve as a photographer does not involve any particular piece of gear or course of study, nor does it involve apprenticing yourself to a master photographer. The very best way to become a better photographer is to take a lot of pictures and select the best few. In that process, the photographer develops an ongoing portfolio and figures out what their strengths are as a photographer. The best photographers understand how to look at their failed images and understand why those images did NOT work. Like in many pursuits, photographers learn as much or more from their mistakes as they do from their successes.

The problem is that most photographers cannot edit their own work well. Sometimes they are too caught up in the content of the image and other times they are too focused on the emotional experience they underwent as they made the photographs. Outsiders looking at the same images do not care that the badly framed portrait shows a beloved child nor do they care how the photographer hiked for hours to make the image in question.

Looking at the photographs as they are, without explanation (or even captions in many cases) is how almost all end-users of photographs experience them. In this class we ill explore how to edit your own photographs effectively by similarly stepping back and looking at your work as an outsider. Through exercises, David will train you to look at photographs analytically. In this workshop, we go through an exercise where we consider:

• How do you "Critique" photographs?
• Saying "wow," "neat" or "cool" is not critiquing photographs.
• We need a common language for critiquing photographs.
• We need to be able to discuss the photographic tools, elements and techniques the photographer used, successfully or unsuccessfully, to make the image that communicates their idea.
• This is regardless of photographic style, media, genre, format, etc.

In this two part class, master photographer and teacher, David H. Wells will show you how to edit images with a clear vision.

Friday night he will walk you through his career path, show examples of best edits of his work and teach you the basics of selecting the best few images from a large set of work.

Saturday, each student should bring a stack of photos (4 x 6 to 8x 10 inch prints only, no digital files) for selection/editing. Ideally the set will be approximately 100 images one one, two or maybe three different subjects/themes, which will be edited down to a top twenty during the class. Students leave the class with an education in photo editing AND a professionally executed edit that will cut their large set of images down to a final, tightly edited and clearly defined top twenty.

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