La Pichardiere - Photographing a Place
What does it take to photograph a place? That was my mission when I travelled to Reffuveille, France to spend Christmas and New Year’s with my friend Rob, his parents, and our friends.
I photographed on average twice a day. I would wake up at sunrise, which was at unusually late time for me, around 8:30 am, and walked to see the horses. I would return to them sometime in the late afternoon. I created a bank of images. I also took photos of life around the farm and our adventures as friends, dinner and giving Christmas presents. It was a daily practice that gave structure to my day and a drive to be one of the first to wake up.
I left for Jordan 10 days later, with 650 images in my camera waiting to be looked at.
The process is not straightforward. I sift through the photos, and then edit them in Lightroom. I take each image I flag and adjust the light and color to bring out the thing I want to say in each image. After that, I start this puzzle in my head. I am now familiar with all the photos and need to tell a story. What do I include and where should it start? The wrangling process of including and excluding photos begins.
It’s a highly iterative process. I feel like I’m mining through a metaphorical cave. After brushing the major brushstrokes of the story and choosing a general storyline, I start at the beginning of the sequence and allow the story to be told to me through the images I chose. If anything doesn’t make sense, I go back and negotiate. If something doesn’t feel right, I go back and negotiate. I have a determination to get to the finish line, but only when I feel like the sequence makes sense at each photo. I take days off to allow my mind to rest from the images, and come back with a fresh perspective to allow the photos to imprint themselves on me again.
Once the photos flow smoothly, I feel the ending nearing, I feel the ease to say, it’s done.
How the editing process looks like - iterations of sequences and trying to cut down as much as possible.
