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So in 2019, around about April, I started printing out my contact sheets to both a jpeg and a physical print. As the end of the year approached I ended up making a book of them all. In 2020, kicked off this thread which was meant to be a 1 year project documenting my contact sheets. As that year is now up and we're into 2021 I've decided to keep my thread ongoing but instead of every sheet, I'll just add those I find interesting.
So if you want to do something similar, feel free to start your own thread and either tag me to add you here, or I'll notice it at some point...
Edit to add...
Nige's Thread
Ian's Thread
Chris' Thread
Paul's Thread
What is a contact sheet?
Quite simply, it's a single sheet of paper (usually 8x10 or A4) that shows mini pictures of all your images. It allows you to at-a-glance see all the images you've taken (historically on a roll of film) and pick the best ones (or keepers). There's a book called "Magnum Contact Sheets" which illustrates this perfectly.
The benefit I've got from this is to be able to look back at a year's worth of photography in a single book. The ability to flip back and forth through the pages is something a computer just can't compete with. Also, my contact sheets contain all the crap as well as the keepers. However by shooting film, I very rarely have more than one image of the same thing. With the exception of cats...
Seeing the "crap" helps me almost as much as seeing the good stuff, because it reminds me what doesn't work. All we ever see online is people's best work, so it's almost uncomfortable to show everything. Even posting these samples here made me cringe a bit. Knowing that my contact sheets are going online will definitely focus my efforts to think even more about the pictures I'm taking.
Also, there's the added interest that the contact sheet itself can be presented as a collage representing something more than a single image - a stand alone image in its own right if that makes sense... I really like this idea and will be thinking about exploring it a bit more.
I've used contact sheets digitally as well as on film, so I'm not suggesting this is a 'film shooter only' experiment. However if you do shoot digital I would suggest that you consider limiting yourself in some way to avoid just taking 10,000 images and curating down to 36 of the best - as that kinda defeats the point of the exercise. Maybe roll your shots up into a contact sheet once a day/week/month depending on the amount of images you shoot?
I have shot 74 rolls of film since April to date (end of November 2019) which is almost ten rolls a month. I tend to shoot a film relatively quickly once it's in the camera, often taking "use it up" shots at the end of the roll. Time often then passes until another roll gets loaded into something else and we rinse and repeat.
This experiment isn't going to suit everyone, and I'm not sure how it would work, but I'm dropping the idea out there in case there's interest.
How Do We Do This?
I was thinking of having a master thread (much like the 52s do) which has instructions and contains a list of all people taking part with links to their individual contact sheet thread.
My thinking would be that you would start a "Contact 2020" thread and at a suitable time, you would post up your contact sheet along with a brief description about the images and what you were trying to achieve, followed by picking out particular images that either worked or didn't. It would be relatively easy to use Excel-like referencing to talk about your images (rows by letter, columns by number)
I intend to do this just for my own benefit whether folks take part or not, but if we get a couple of people interested, it would be good to visit other people's threads to offer encouragement & feedback. The whole point of a contact sheet is to pick the best, so I would discourage "that photo in A4 isn't straight" or "you chopped his head off in B2" feedback. Chances are, if you're taking part in something like this - you know that already. However people will still do this so I think anyone taking part is going to have to have a thick skin and the ability to just ignore that sort of feedback. However feedback like "that image in C2 looks like a stronger image to me because of x, y and z" is something I would find particularly useful. Your best bet is probably to actually state the sort of feedback you're after when you post each contact sheet.
It's also project agnostic, so if you're doing motorsport, or landscape, or street photography, or still life, or a mixture of all of that, it doesn't matter. The chances are though, that your contact sheet will reflect one of those areas, so it could be useful to present it to others.
How To Make A Contact Sheet
I only know how to do this in Lightroom but as a bare minimum, you could arrange the images in a folder on your computer (view>extra large icon) and screen grab it with the snipping tool [Windows].
In Lightroom...
Select all the photos, go into the Print module, set the paper size to A4 Landscape with the Page Setup button bottom left. Top right, set the layout style to "Single Image/Contact Sheet" and set the layout to Rows 6, Columns 6 (for 36 exp), 5x5 for 24exp, etc etc. Go down to "Print Job" and select "Print to Jpeg file". When you hit the "Print" button you'll then be asked to specify a location on your HD and you can treat it the same as any other image.
One thing that makes the contact sheets look prettier is having them all the same orientation. This can be a bit jarring with an online sheet but makes no difference with a print because you can just rotate the paper.
So is anyone interested? Do you have any thoughts for improving this? As I said above, I'll probably do this myself and will be happy to go it alone, but it could be fun to chart a years worth of progress amongst a small group. The added bonus is that at the end of the year, you can make a book (it's very easy to do when all the images are the same size!) and have a permanent record, rather than a hard drive full of stuff no one else will ever see.
I would imagine kicking this off in January and it would run to December. There is no requirement to post images under certain time frames - you post your contact sheets whenever you want. Although trying to get them up as they're created would be best. Putting 20 up in one go isn't going to get much feedback as it's too much for someone to go thorough all at once.
I was toying with the idea of one camera, one lens, one film, but I prefer this idea as it's much less restrictive but still useful.
I have no idea if this is the best place to post this, so I'll add a link to my sig. Mods - if you think this is more appropriate elsewhere, feel free to shift it...
So if you want to do something similar, feel free to start your own thread and either tag me to add you here, or I'll notice it at some point...
Edit to add...
Nige's Thread
Ian's Thread
Chris' Thread
Paul's Thread
What is a contact sheet?
Quite simply, it's a single sheet of paper (usually 8x10 or A4) that shows mini pictures of all your images. It allows you to at-a-glance see all the images you've taken (historically on a roll of film) and pick the best ones (or keepers). There's a book called "Magnum Contact Sheets" which illustrates this perfectly.
The benefit I've got from this is to be able to look back at a year's worth of photography in a single book. The ability to flip back and forth through the pages is something a computer just can't compete with. Also, my contact sheets contain all the crap as well as the keepers. However by shooting film, I very rarely have more than one image of the same thing. With the exception of cats...
Seeing the "crap" helps me almost as much as seeing the good stuff, because it reminds me what doesn't work. All we ever see online is people's best work, so it's almost uncomfortable to show everything. Even posting these samples here made me cringe a bit. Knowing that my contact sheets are going online will definitely focus my efforts to think even more about the pictures I'm taking.
Also, there's the added interest that the contact sheet itself can be presented as a collage representing something more than a single image - a stand alone image in its own right if that makes sense... I really like this idea and will be thinking about exploring it a bit more.
I've used contact sheets digitally as well as on film, so I'm not suggesting this is a 'film shooter only' experiment. However if you do shoot digital I would suggest that you consider limiting yourself in some way to avoid just taking 10,000 images and curating down to 36 of the best - as that kinda defeats the point of the exercise. Maybe roll your shots up into a contact sheet once a day/week/month depending on the amount of images you shoot?
I have shot 74 rolls of film since April to date (end of November 2019) which is almost ten rolls a month. I tend to shoot a film relatively quickly once it's in the camera, often taking "use it up" shots at the end of the roll. Time often then passes until another roll gets loaded into something else and we rinse and repeat.
This experiment isn't going to suit everyone, and I'm not sure how it would work, but I'm dropping the idea out there in case there's interest.
How Do We Do This?
I was thinking of having a master thread (much like the 52s do) which has instructions and contains a list of all people taking part with links to their individual contact sheet thread.
My thinking would be that you would start a "Contact 2020" thread and at a suitable time, you would post up your contact sheet along with a brief description about the images and what you were trying to achieve, followed by picking out particular images that either worked or didn't. It would be relatively easy to use Excel-like referencing to talk about your images (rows by letter, columns by number)
I intend to do this just for my own benefit whether folks take part or not, but if we get a couple of people interested, it would be good to visit other people's threads to offer encouragement & feedback. The whole point of a contact sheet is to pick the best, so I would discourage "that photo in A4 isn't straight" or "you chopped his head off in B2" feedback. Chances are, if you're taking part in something like this - you know that already. However people will still do this so I think anyone taking part is going to have to have a thick skin and the ability to just ignore that sort of feedback. However feedback like "that image in C2 looks like a stronger image to me because of x, y and z" is something I would find particularly useful. Your best bet is probably to actually state the sort of feedback you're after when you post each contact sheet.
It's also project agnostic, so if you're doing motorsport, or landscape, or street photography, or still life, or a mixture of all of that, it doesn't matter. The chances are though, that your contact sheet will reflect one of those areas, so it could be useful to present it to others.
How To Make A Contact Sheet
I only know how to do this in Lightroom but as a bare minimum, you could arrange the images in a folder on your computer (view>extra large icon) and screen grab it with the snipping tool [Windows].
In Lightroom...
Select all the photos, go into the Print module, set the paper size to A4 Landscape with the Page Setup button bottom left. Top right, set the layout style to "Single Image/Contact Sheet" and set the layout to Rows 6, Columns 6 (for 36 exp), 5x5 for 24exp, etc etc. Go down to "Print Job" and select "Print to Jpeg file". When you hit the "Print" button you'll then be asked to specify a location on your HD and you can treat it the same as any other image.
One thing that makes the contact sheets look prettier is having them all the same orientation. This can be a bit jarring with an online sheet but makes no difference with a print because you can just rotate the paper.
So is anyone interested? Do you have any thoughts for improving this? As I said above, I'll probably do this myself and will be happy to go it alone, but it could be fun to chart a years worth of progress amongst a small group. The added bonus is that at the end of the year, you can make a book (it's very easy to do when all the images are the same size!) and have a permanent record, rather than a hard drive full of stuff no one else will ever see.
I would imagine kicking this off in January and it would run to December. There is no requirement to post images under certain time frames - you post your contact sheets whenever you want. Although trying to get them up as they're created would be best. Putting 20 up in one go isn't going to get much feedback as it's too much for someone to go thorough all at once.
I was toying with the idea of one camera, one lens, one film, but I prefer this idea as it's much less restrictive but still useful.
I have no idea if this is the best place to post this, so I'll add a link to my sig. Mods - if you think this is more appropriate elsewhere, feel free to shift it...
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