Over the time I have developed the habit of creating and posting series around a scene or a particular photographic topic. I would like to explore a little the background and purpose of this practice.
I guess I do it like most photographers when I find an interesting scene or subject that I want to photograph. I shoot several pictures of this scene. My train of thought when shooting is that this will give me a better choice so that I can pick the best picture and process it to what I had envisaged when starting to shoot the scene. Sometimes it also happens that I walk around with a certain idea on my mind and on my way I take pictures that fit the idea. So I am already creating a series of pictures around a certain theme.
When working with the pictures in post processing I often find that one picture alone does not entirely express the situation or person or idea that I encountered during the shooting process. So creating more than one photograph and looking at an idea from several different perspectives gives better credit to what happened during the shooting.
For example when shooting and processing my recent snow storm pictures I liked the perspective of the empty street with the lack of a visible vanishing point in the haze very much. So it was the optical perspective that attracted me. However in this scene the drifting snow was not very well visible.
Picture with nice perspective and vanishing point in the haze. But where are the snow flakes….?
I found this element better expressed in two other pictures so I decided to include them in the series too.
The drifting snow is better visible against the backdrop of the dark coloured building.
The illuminated petrol station in the haze was another optical focus point that I was keen on showing.
My processing created this slightly “smeary” impression of the petrol station with no visible drifting snow in the air.
Overall I used fours pictures to express my ideas and thoughts that I had around the topic “urban snow storm”.
So covering different aspects of one them (or one person) is certainly one reason to create and publish series of pictures. Another reason is that I like to curate my Flickr gallery in a consistent visually appealing way. I have found that showing a number of pictures expressing the same visual idea creates a nicer “visual flow” in my gallery. So for curation reasons I sometimes post more than one picture of a theme. It pleases my eye and I find it more attractive than the “checkered” pattern of different visual themes in a row.
To my mind the idea of creating a nicely curated flow in a gallery is often not sufficiently followed. Many virtual galleries on Flickr but also on Instagram or other places that show photographic work look as if somebody had thrown pictures together without really thinking about the overall impression they want to create. Curation, reducing diversity, creating a more coherent visual style in one’s presentation is to my mind an important aspect in showing and presenting our photography.
To me showing a photograph encompasses more than just looking at the single picture and liking or disliking it. It is about the context and the overall visual idea that I have on my mind.
If you have thoughts about this, maybe you let me know.