11. Editing
Jonas Bendiksen:
Curiosity in Practice
Jonas Bendiksen: Curiosity in Practice — Editing	 2
Contents Editing	3
Jonas Bendiksen’s Editing Workflow	6
Backing Up	 8
Sequencing	10
Looking in the Mirror	 12
Jonas Bendiksen: Curiosity in Practice — Editing	 3
Editing  “I hear again and again people say, ‘Oh yeah, I love doing photography
but editing, I’m not so good an editor’ or ‘I hate editing’. To me,
it makes no sense because editing is actually most of the job that a
photographer does. I mean, that’s the most time-consuming part. The
editing is really where you shape your stories and you decide really who
you are as a photographer and what this project is all about.”
Editing is a hugely important and valuable process with different stages
and uses. Not to be confused with post-processing your images with
programs like Lightroom or Photoshop, editing is the process of looking
deeply at the photographs you are making, to interrogate them with a
critical eye, to review and reject the weak images, and to find something
remarkable on the contact sheet or screen.
One fundamental component of this process is giving your pictures time
and attention. In doing so, you can begin to understand yourself as a
photographer more deeply, while also contributing to the development
of your photographic practice, learning from your mistakes, missed
opportunities or outright failures, all of which are frequent occurrences
in photography.
Editing is a personal and contemplative process, with no right or
wrong approach; some photographers prefer to work at the computer,
while others print out images. As Bendiksen explains, he employs both
methods depending on the output of a project. For commercial projects
he will choose to work mostly on screen, but when it comes to long-term
personal projects, then printing is a necessary part of the process:
you “get to know the images a little bit better when you’re handling
them with your hands”.
Jonas Bendiksen: Curiosity in Practice — Editing	 4
Far From Home, for National
Geographic. At the Ritz Carlton
in Jumeirah. Alex, from
Ghana, is the “Pool Ambassador”,
serving drinks around
the pool. Dubai. United Arab
Emirates. 2013.
Jonas Bendiksen: Curiosity in Practice — Editing	 5
Jonas Bendiksen’s
EditingWorkflow
 “Slogging through 10,000 pictures and ending up with 50 is hard work…
it’s an overwhelming number... how do you manage to actually do that?
I have a very mechanical approach.”
In this lesson, Bendiksen walks us through his editing workflow. Editing is
difficult and time-consuming, so Bendiksen advises that all photographers
have an organized system in place which streamlines their process, from
uploading the images at the end of a shoot day, through to retouching and
final output. “I really try to make it as simple for myself as possible”.
Jonas Bendiksen: Curiosity in Practice — Editing	 6
Beginning at the computer, he uses software with a star rating system
(his choice is Adobe Lightroom) and divides his editing approach in to
three simple stages:
First Pass – 1 Star Rating
In the first cull of images, Bendiksen removes any photographs he does
not see potential in, keeping all images he thinks could be useful for
his current work, or in the future for other projects. The purpose of this
initial wide edit is to remove any mistakes or unsuccessful images so
that he is left with a more manageable number of images to work with.
Bendiksen will only ever do this step once and usually finds he is left
with about 20% of the images that he started with.
Second Pass – 2 Star Rating
This stage involves cutting down his image selection to the best 150
images. If there are duplicates of the same frame, then Bendiksen advises
you only choose the best two or three of that image in order to produce a
tighter edit. At this point, “the good stuff starts crystallizing and moving
to the surface... and it gets easier to compare the different situations”.
Final Pass – 3+ Star Rating
The last part of the process involves working in reverse. Bendiksen will
select the best three to five images from his previous edit of 150, the ones
that are the foundations or building blocks of his story and that he feels
need to be in his final selection. Once he has chosen these key images, he
will revisit his wider, 150-image edit and add images back in to flesh out
the story.
Jonas Bendiksen: Curiosity in Practice — Editing	 7
Backing Up If you are working with digital files, the most important part of
your editing workflow should always be to back up your images.
As Bendiksen explains, hard drives are not built to last forever. It
is therefore necessary to have a system in place where your files are
regularly archived and stored safely, in case of any equipment loss or
malfunction. Bendiksen finds using a combination of multiple hard
drives and cloud-based storage the best option, the latter of which
can be simple and inexpensive.
“You will be so sad the day your hard drive dies, because it will. Hard
drives aren’t built to last. They all die. Even the good ones, the good
brands, they have a limited lifetime. So it’s not a matter of if your hard
drive will die, it’s a question of when. So back your material up! There
are several ways to do it: you can just buy a bunch of hard drives and
back up each individual drive. You can get big hard drives: I mean, it’s
much cheaper to buy a 10 terabyte hard drive than a totally normal
quality lens… with that, you can probably back up your entire archive
and years to come of material. You back up your entire laptop, your
computer, all of that and you take that back up and you store it at a
friend’s house. It’s that simple. Or… there are all these cloud based
systems now that just automatically uploads it all and it costs the same
price as a couple of beers a month. I do all of those things.”
Jonas Bendiksen: Curiosity in Practice — Editing	 8
Jonas Bendiksen: Curiosity in Practice — Editing	 9
Sequencing  “Everything changes with sequencing. It’s really about finding the right
ebb and flow of the narrative.”
Bringing photographs together into a sequence allows the photographer
to create a rhythm or “flow” in the work, and to build an overarching
narrative or atmosphere into a project. There are many choices to be
made when bringing images together into a series or sequence: is the
story you are trying to tell best shown chronologically? Do you want to
organize images into groups? Do you need to incorporate other images
in-between these groupings to act as breaks? ...and so many more!
By bringing images together you can start to form connections or
juxtapositions, pose questions or surprise the viewer as they move
through the work. Simply placing one image alongside another could
drastically influence how the viewer interprets each of them.
There are different outputs to consider; an assignment, exhibition or
photobook are different propositions entirely but the whole process of
editing and sequencing can be a liberating and creative experience. Start
experimenting!
Jonas Bendiksen: Curiosity in Practice — Editing	 10
 “You know, you’re distilling it to just a few
images. And you’re sort of seeing how
you’re going to guide the viewer through
this experience. And I think a lot of people
miss that part, in the sense that they think
photography is all about being out in the
field and using your camera and the rest is
sort of details. No, I think the other way
around… after all the planning you’ve
done and all the time you’re going to spend
afterwards editing… the actual taking of the
photographs in the field, that’s sort of like
almost a small detail of the process, which is
critical, of course, but it’s really just one part
of a lot of important things. So the editing,
the sequencing? For me, that’s where a lot of
the magic happens.”
Jonas Bendiksen: Curiosity in Practice — Editing	 11
Looking in the Mirror  “We all know that feeling when you’re looking at these images: you’ve
seen the same images again and again and again and you kind of go
blind. You look at them so many times you don’t even know, ‘was this
picture good in the first place? Is it brilliant or is it garbage?’. You have
no idea and you get paralysed because you can’t make decisions because
you’ve seen them so many times. I have the solution!”
It is, without doubt, a challenge to look objectively at your own
photographs. The editing process is long: often we have seen our images
many times, which clouds our judgment and leads us to feel stuck. We
also attach memories or emotions to images which can inhibit a critical
eye, and therefore lead to instances where we hold onto weaker images
or struggle to make a decision. For this, Bendiksen shares his tried and
tested technique: looking in the mirror.
When Bendiksen is finding it difficult to edit his images, he will print
them out at a small size and hold them up to the mirror. Looking at
the images in reverse allows him to see the photographs with fresh eyes,
replicating the feeling of seeing them for the first time. Very often this
simple experiment can help him to make the more difficult decisions of
the editing process.
If you feel stuck, try Bendiksen’s technique and see if it helps you assess
your images with a new perspective.
Jonas Bendiksen: Curiosity in Practice — Editing	 12
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