World Press Photo entry guest editor..it's TANK!

David White posted this on January 11th, 2010

I thought I’d get down to some editing for the World Press Photo Awards (why does that have caps?) last night, and it all got a mit bessy. First off, I sat down at the computer, as you would, being a modern snapper and all. However, as I had 350 pics to look at, things soon got tricky. I’ve never liked editing a large set on a computer – I’d much rather shuffle a set of prints. As luck would have it I had a set of work prints that I had already edited on a computer…about 30 or so prints. I spread those prints out on the floor, and all was well.

Every one of those 30 prints was important to the story, down from an initial edit of 350; yet I had to lose another 18 to enter a story category in the WPP awards. That was not easy. I was interested to see on the WPP site that the judges will look at a story entry as one entity initially..ie all pics at once. The set must flow well and clearly as a story. Only after that do the judges look at the images individually. Another note on their site was to remind photographers to forget personal feelings for the images, what you had to do to get them etc…that is a very important tip and one that is not easy to follow even after years of experience in editing.

Anyway..back to the prints. I thought I’d made my vicious edit, and was content. Then I asked the wife. Interestingly she chose 9 of the 12 that I did. We then went back and forward for an age and couldn’t decide on the final edit. As luck would have it, just then the cat came in from playing in the snow. He proceeded to walk across all the prints, muddying loads, lay down across them all, sat up and licked his arse.

It’s a good job you don’t enter prints to the WPP awards anymore, I wouldn’t have been a happy bunny. After deciding not to get annoyed with the cat (what’s the point at getting annoyed at a cat?) I picked up my prints. Twelve of them had huge, muddy Maine Coon footprints on, 18 did not.

Tank had chosen my edit. I’m going with it. What could possibly go wrong?