Just finished meeting with my mentor, and hark! She helped me summit Photo Selection Mountain. Let me tell you, the view from this peak is amazing.
In my previous post, I said that I didn’t think that our photo selection process would take more than an hour. Wrong.
During previous meetings of this type, I have seen my mentor blow through dozens of my photos like a hurricane. And her rapid-fire critiques have been right on the money.
This time, she slowly and carefully went through each gallery. All the while, I was slowly and carefully noting her selections.
Statistical Recap
As mentioned previously, I started by shooting thousands of photos for my urban nature book. Then I winnowed them down to 530 that deserve consideration for inclusion.
Since my mentor didn’t want to go through all 530 photos, she asked me to make another edit. My best picks added up to 164 photos, or 31% of the aforementioned set of 530 keepers.
During our photo selection session, my mentor chose 84 photos. That’s 51% of my crop of 164 photos and 16% of those 530 keepers.
What happens next?
I expect that my manuscript will need quite a bit of rewriting in order to accommodate those 84 photos. Will I actually use all of them in the book? I don’t know yet.
So, stay tuned. The good news is that this project is starting to feel more like a book and less like a writing and photography project.
TIP: Track the book’s progress by subscribing to my monthly email newsletter. Here’s your form: