Impulse

To improve in any cre­ative pur­suit, you’ve got to be good at judg­ing your own work. Jay Maisel also points out in the Epson Online Experience that being a good edi­tor is essen­tial to grow­ing pro­fes­sion­ally — “If you don’t edit well, nobodys going to know how well youre shoot­ing.” That’s all com­pletely true, but judg­ing your own work is damn hard!

I’m great at judg­ing other people’s work — I’ll tell you what I love and don’t love. I’ll help you refine & focus towards your desired end. I’ve been review­ing people’s work for years, and have got­ten very good at it. It’s a blast. But, when it’s time to turn my atten­tion to my own work, some­thing strange hap­pens — I loose all abil­ity to dis­cern between great­ness and garbage.
Of course, this hap­pens to every­one. One of the biggest hur­dles is for­get­ting the con­text of the work. When I look my pic­tures, I still remem­ber being there. I can hear the voices of peo­ple talk­ing; remem­ber what I felt like in that moment. This con­text insin­u­ates mean­ing into the pic­ture that isn’t cap­tured in it. I look at the pic­ture and it seems good — some­one else looks at it and there’s noth­ing. You’ve got free your­self from all con­text to judge your work objec­tively.
Here’s an exam­ple from my Golden Leaf project. When we were shoot­ing, I loved how every­thing on the set focused up to one point — an old man pluck­ing a leaf off a tree. Crew mem­bers all watched the hand rise to the leaf; lights beamed up at it; the cam­era was trained on the hand, glid­ing upwards with it; pro­duc­tion assis­tants were arrayed at the bot­tom hold­ing every­thing in posi­tion for the all-important moment. It’s one of those sur­real moments that fre­quently occur on a film set when an incred­i­ble ammount of effort cen­ters on some triv­ial lit­tle action.
I remem­ber my impres­sion of the moment well. When I look at the pic­ture, it all comes back. Yet, I didn’t quite cap­ture it. Most peo­ple pass over this pic­ture with­out much inter­est. They see the pic­ture as it really is — some pic­ture of a guy on a lad­der. To judge the photo accu­rately, I need to see it igno­rant of all con­text.
Even with­out all con­text, I often find it dif­fi­cult to dis­cern between good and bad work. I know I’m wrong some­times. I’ve often been sur­prised by how excited peo­ple will get over pic­tures of mine that I found dull. I have one image from Seattle Center’s foun­tain that I find plain, but it is one of the most requested pic­tures I have. One of my friends liked it so much, she actu­ally cried when I gave it to her for Christmas. So, with that aware­ness of my inabil­ity to pre­dict people’s reac­tions, I’m afraid I might toss one of those mys­te­ri­ous pic­tures I hate but oth­ers love.
The cure, of course, is to say, “Screw ‘em!”. It comes down to integrity again: for­get what I think other peo­ple will like, and just judge based on my own reac­tion to it. Do I like it? I may be wrong from time to time, choos­ing some­thing that nobody else will like or throw­ing away a jem. Only by focus­ing on what I like will I be able to explore my own taste, and in time develop that impulse into some­thing larger. In the mean­time, I’ll just be a lit­tle weird.
Finally, I often get down to two ver­sions that I have a hard time choos­ing the bet­ter. Again, Jay Maisel is right on the money: “When it gets that close, it really doesn’t mat­ter. Just make a damn decision!”