“I suck” Saturday

It is this time of the year again. Time to choose four images to send out to Iowa State Fair photography contest. The ultimate, real life test of my accomplishment as a photographer in the last year. The only contest I masochistically participate from the first year I got my dSLR.

Well, technically there is still plenty of time to make choices and send files to Mpix for printing. But the truth is, I am going to be away for most of month of May, and when I am back, I will have just few days to get the package out. Bottom line- another thing, aside of several fixes to the house, we need to get done before taking off.

I know the time spend picking the pictures to send out to State Fair should be a happy day. I can go through the favorite images, mine, my friends (this time my husband and my close friend had few excellent suggestions) and easily choose four best images from last 12 months. Print them and proudly send them off. Well, it typically doesn’t work that way.

Each year I promise myself to make a collection in Lightroom and systematically put in it the best images from all the shooting sessions. Then I would have just one place to go to create a portfolio, or to have easier choice when contest time comes. And yet, I dont do that. And each time I need to go thorough all the images, several thousands of them, including those really bad from family vacation and random iPhone shots…

This year it hit me particularly hard. I am mostly disappointed in how little I improved and how mundane most of images are. First, I decided my images just suck. When I start rationalizing, I still feel bad, but now I am thinking I have seen so many great images in just last few days, that mine are just so boring and there is nothing unusual about them.

Right now, I have still almost twice as much images as I need and I have to edit them down to the final set. I better sleep over the choice. And hopefully, get up tomorrow in a more positive mood. After all, they cannot be all that bad, can they?