Let’s be clear to open this letter. The subtitle “About painful choices” isn’t about pain which causes endless tears, or ends in surgeries. At least, not until difficult habits can be surgically removed. (See James Clear to learn how habits are really removed or added).
Pain comes to mind because I’m getting closer to finishing a book. It’s shaping up to be about 85% imagery and the rest text. Modified slightly from a passage in the current draft is this:
“Creating this book has required habits of process, and if you’ve ever made a book, familiar struggles. It’s always a bigger project than I imagine. First with choosing the central ideas, then assembling materials, storytelling, and all the choices throughout. So many choices. How much writing, how many images? What stories should NOT get told, and for photographers in particular, which images do not fit well enough? What must I, with regret and sadness, leave out? Because even though I really, seriously, oh-so-badly want to include a thing, it may not pair strongly enough with images on the facing page. Or the extra story would disrupt the flow of the other pages. Or, quite simply, the subject would be redundant. Say, aren’t there too many foxes in this book? It’s been said, but I seem to have ignored the admonition.”
Yes, I have a soft spot for foxes, with their colors, pelts, and actions. Still, the following pair of images is “out”. I really like the determination the animal seems to convey as it hunts, and the snow all over it in the second image, following its failed attempts to pounce on prey of some sort.
But too bad, so sad, they are on the cutting room floor.
This next fox is “in”, at least for now. Why? The catchlight and stare-back, the lighting and the pose, but beyond any of that, it pairs well with the raccoon you saw from last week, which I mean to include. Together they also fit the flow of the book pretty well:
I could have gone with this mocha-colored mink instead, but it doesn’t work nearly as well next to the raccoon, nor is it fitting anywhere else so far. Its omission from the book pains me. It’s not that I love the image in isolation, it’s “fine”, but it demonstrates a color variation that I’d like to share. Minks have been long valued for their pelts. I’m happy to let them continue to wear them, but happier still to share images showing all their colors. Sadly, this one is not making the cut. It doesn’t fit the page spreads I’m settling on so far. I haven’t given up entirely, but I think it’s “out”.
These are “in”, although I might need to alter the text. The current spread references multi-colored pelts. Which, as of today, are nowhere to be found in the book!
I thought about replacing one of the images above with the loamy brown mink, but the spread above shows one animal’s movements (which I’m describing in the story), and this pairing works better together visually. I tried replacing one with the lighter colored guy and didn’t like it. Then, on the following page I’ll have a 2-page spread of a different mink that I’m compelled to keep in the book, because it’s a great pose and a dramatic spread. The only negative, not the animal’s fault of course, is that the dramatic mink is also a french roast color. And adding all of four of them to the book, or five if I use another loamy pelt… it would be a lot of minks. Too many, is my current view. As of today, anyway.
Sigh.
When I said at the beginning that it’s always a bigger project than I imagine, this is one of the many reasons!
More to come in future letters.
Until next time,
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Oh, it's so tough to pare down images for a project, isn't it!? I see why you had to make the choices you did, but I'd be lying if I said excluding that mink's tiny paw, stepping out in action, doesn't hurt the most!
Lovely shots of the foxes in the snow!!