I was just looking through a book of mine called "Original Sources, Art and Archives at the Center for Creative Photography" In the book they have a couple of photographs of original contact sheets of W. Eugene Smith's Spanish village photo essay (Life magazine). On the contact sheet there are 14 variations of one of Smith's iconic images of a woman spinning. It is comforting to know that I am not necessarily over shooting subjects. If Smith took 14 shots to make his great photograph, then working on a subject and taking over 10 shots with slightly different compositions/movements is perfectly acceptable. I guess when you only see the final images of something for years and years you can forget that many photos with subtle differences might have been made before and after the decisive shot. If varying movement and shooting lots of exposures of a subject is good enough for my idol Eugene Smith, it is certainly good enough for little old me. Who cares how many pictures you make of a subject as long as you get the final important photograph, that is all that matters.
 |
| Spanish Spinner, Eugene Smith 1950 |
