Photographic Wabi-Sabi

One of the blessings of moving from traditional film photography to the digital medium is that there is no longer any cost (in time or money) associated with taking photographs. Whereas previously one would have been circumspect with using the shutter-button for fear of wasting film, now there is no such consideration.

In fact, we usually take photographs in "burst mode" now, such that a sequence of three or four photographs are taken in rapid succession, in order to increase the likelihood that at least one will not suffer from blurring, closed eyelids, and other events that would otherwise ruin a good photograph. Also, this lack of circumspection means that we tend to take photographs of more subjects.

Combined with the ever-increasing size of digital snaps, this all results in a very, very large collection of photographs. Our collection was getting so large that we simply didn't have the energy to look through it. Most of the photographs were just plain low quality. We selected certain favourites and put them into a separate folder, but the majority of the collection sat around collecting binary dust.

Recently having discussed the clutter-free ideals of wabi-sabi living, it seemed inevitable that our sprawling collection of photographs would face the same scrutiny as had our collections of books, teas, and clothing.

Over the course of a few week-ends, we pruned away the massive array of redundant or unpleasant shots in our collection, and reduced it in size from 12 GB to around 800 MB - it now fits onto a USB memory stick. The result is a high-quality collection which is a pleasure to peruse, far removed from the low-quality, high-clutter affair from before.

However...

I always assumed that my tea photographs were "above the law". I habitually photograph every new tea I encounter (capturing its wrapper, leaves, brew, and so on). Though this made for a truly enormous folder of photographs, I considered it essential reference material.

Lei asked me the function of this huge folder of tea pictures.

Confidently, I replied, "Of course, it's my reference material for my previous teas!"

She asked me how often I consulted it. Indeed, if I had ever consulted it. Especially seeing as the majority of my tea-notes on the Half-Dipper are accompanied by photographs, which was one of my purposes for creating the web-site in the first place.

My shoulders slumped as I saw the inevitable about to occur.

Here follows "before" and "after" screenshots of my tea folder. Click on the small photographs to look at them in detail - pay particular attention to the size of the scroll-bars on the right of each window...

Before
(click for larger image)

After
(click for larger image)

Despite the initial pain of separation, the result is strangely liberating. All that remains are the photographs that I truly love and enjoy looking at, so that the collection now has a purpose. I had no idea just how many useless and just plain awful photographs were contained in that huge pile: most looked like the equivalent of police interrogation shots, with the subject brutally photographed under dazzling lights.

It's hard to let go... but it feels great afterwards.

Give it a whirl. You have nothing to lose but your low-quality piles of "stuff". It's rather liberating.