On processing and sequence.

This is a view of the Dunkard Church on Antietam Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Maryland, taken just yesterday. It's also one of my defocus attempts that will make it into the finalized PDF, I think.

So it seems I have about a dozen images now that are candidates for SoFoBoMo (if I'm not too picky about so-called redundant subject matter - get ready for a lot of defocused trees) - which leaves me far more relaxed about the whole thing than I was on Thursday. Day 4 with twelve viable shots is making good progress, I think. Most of those candidates fall under the "defocus" technique, so I guess I'd also better work more on the other techniques I had in mind to inject a bit of variety in the finished product.

However after spending some time working with these images in the past day, I also realized that my book will not feature processing coherence. I know some people aim, and for good reason, for a set of images that are all processed the same, or similarly, so as to provide a sense of relationship among the various subject matters the images represent. It also helps to set an overall "mood", too, I suspect. There are likely even more reasons than I've mentioned here. I've enjoyed viewing collections that have such symmetry in presentation, so I don't have any particular problem with it.

But I've found out over time for me, and in particular with this project's current output of images, that one (processing) size does not fit all, and I wouldn't want to force the issue. I often don't find what is "special" about an image until I've played with it in post-processing, and as a result, I frequently choose a processing strategy that can be dramatically different for any one image, as compared to any other of my images. Which for me, is just fine and dandy. But the body of work will lack that kind of coherence.

Now, there are other ways to achieve coherence of course - I could feature nothing but defocused images, and that choice would lend a certain coherence, as one example. But I wonder if having images that lack a similarity in processing (coloring, tone, contrast, etc.) will make it difficult - or a least a different kind of difficult - when it comes to choosing the sequencing of the images. Given that different processing styles can invoke different moods, perhaps I should be mindful of placement, so that some bright sparkly thing isn't followed by a moody downer of an image. Likely such considerations are just as thorny for someone with "processing consistency"; perhaps someone can weigh in about that in the comments.

Actually, this puts me in mind of how tracks are arranged on a music recording (if we can assume everyone makes those choices thoughtfully). If you think of the book as a journey through the images, regardless of whether the images arose from some focused theme or subject or whether they are all completely unrelated to one another, choosing sequence becomes quite crucial. For those with an overarching focus (of subject matter, of technique, of manner of processing), maybe sequencing arises more easily. Not easy, mind you, just maybe things fall into place a little faster. But with no such focus, it definitely looks problematic.