Creating a daily panel
Making more of your photographs...
Want to get more from your photos than just capturing good shots? This article explores an easy technique which will add a layer of thought and depth to your photography, and which can be applied to images you already have in your collection.
Night shoot along the river Liffey - 17th November 2019
For a number of years now, when I return from a day’s shooting, memory card full of new images to load up into Lightroom and process, I’ve got into the habit of not just processing the individual shots, but then “finishing off” by creating a panel.
Depending on how many “keepers” I’ve managed to bag that day, the panel might have only a few images in it or a good number. But not all the images taken will typically make the cut for the panel, because they need to work together, to cohere, creating a collection on a single page which almost becomes an image in its own right. And remember what Ansel Adams, one of my photographic heroes said: “Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop”, so my efforts are by no means all “significant images”.
Dublin Street - 6th December 2019
I hadn’t really thought much about this practice until I mentioned it during a few online camera club talks I’ve been doing since Covid. The response when I’ve described my process has always been that other photographers seemed to be really interested and struck by this idea, hence this article…
Often, when looking at my set of processed “keepers” from a day out, it’s difficult to pick out just one which really captures the essence of the day or the shoot. Not always of course - occasionally there is a stand-out shot which is “the one”, but these are the exception rather than the norm - at least for me anyway.
Portrane coastline - 27th September 2020
So I’ve established a practice of trying to assemble a panel of representative images from the day, as a way of summarising my experience and the collective output from the shoot. I normally place the panels on a black background as I like the contrast images gain against black. They then normally end up in my computer’s “Desktops” folder, and then occasionally appear on my screen when the computer is idle, reminding me of the day I shot them.
The images need to sit together, but every now and then I break the rules, if there’s a specific image which I really want to keep in the collection, like this one in the set below. The young woman is dark in the portrait frame and processed very differently from my normal street work, but there’s something about that image which I really like, even though when I took it I really screwed up my exposure to the point where it was almost completely black when I first opened the frame up in Lightroom!
Dublin Street - 18th June 2019
So this might be a practice to consider incorporating into your own workflow, if only as a way to further engage with and consider your images? I’d love to hear from anyone who finds this idea of interest, and even see some of your own panels - feel free to contact me at joe.houghton@gmail.com any time!
Woodland walk - 20th September 2020
I offer camera club talks on a number of topics - Street photography, long exposure, mono processing, Lightroom, as well as judging - full details can be found at https://www.houghtonphoto.com/talks. Would love to hear from any clubs looking for a speaker for the upcoming season…
Until my next rambling…
Joe Houghton - October 2020
Asst. Professor & Director, MSc Project Management programmes, UCD Smurfit Graduate School of Business
Dublin, Ireland
Email : joe.houghton@ucd.ie / joe.houghton@gmail.com / LinkedIn
Tel: +353 86 384 3670