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These are the results.
The intent was to try to discover something about the editing process. I deliberately didn't look through the viewfinder because I didn't want to feel too attached to any of the images: if they were good or bad was really more down to chance, given my selection of subject, than any particular attempt at composition on my part.
For comparison, my own final edit can be seen here, along with snapshots of the intermediate edits as I narrowed down my choices.
For me the most interesting and successful edit was Alan Zinn's. Alan arranged his selections into triptychs, which produced a kind of pseudo-panoramic impression. As Alan is a keen panoramic photographer, as am I, this use of the pictures really struck a chord.
Perhaps the most oblique reading of the photographs was Jawed Ashraf's, whose selections emphasized the discontinuities and fragmentary aspects of the hipshot technique.
Ben Lifson, a well-known and well-respected photographic commentator and critic came up with a selection which I found surprising because it included a number of photographs which didn't even make it past my first cut, which pleased me since this kind of disjunction was one of the reasons for doing the exercise in the first place.
Many other editors picked up on photos which I had passed over or not given a second glance, but when I saw their choices I realised the image might have strenghts I had overlooked.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the whole experiment was that in terms of my personal preference, I would rank my own edit about half-way down. In other words, I found some other people to be more convincing editors of my own work than myself.
Thanks to everyone who took part and took the time to plough through the original images.
If you want to try your own edit, please go ahead and mail me the results. The only stipulation is that your edit should be a maximum of ten images.
All images and text © John Brownlow 2003
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the edits
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martin howard
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