On my last post about my project “Folhas Secas”, I mentioned that I wanted to select a subsample of my leaf photographs to upload to my website. Twelve photos are now on display there, in a gallery entitled ”Dry leaf series”. The title of each photograph is the generic name of the plant, followed by the year the photo was taken. Even though the series of posts about the making of “Folhas Secas” is now complete, the project itself is ongoing, and I will continue to work on it whenever I find an exciting new leaf to add, or to replace one that is on display. Regardless of what I chose to do from now on, the maximum number of dry leaves on my portfolio, at any time, will be 24.
Although I cannot say that I mostly used objective criteria to choose my photos, I tried to select only those that (in my view) go well together, look good in print and which, collectively, offer a variety of shapes, forms, and textures. Some of the excluded photos are not necessarily worse than the ones I have chosen, but if added to the collection, they might appear (in my judgement) either too deviant (from the whole), or redundant.
One good example of deviant pictures is the little “monsters” that amused me while I tried to “shoot” them (see Folhas Secast, part four, for one example). Although they are cute and evoking, I felt that they are not consistent with my initial vision, which I clearly elaborated on a previous post, Folhas Secas, part two.
Thanks for following me through this project, and I hope that this series of posts has helped at least some of you to consider engaging in a photography project in the future. Digital Photography School has an article summarizing the benefits of and giving tips about working in projects, if you are interested: How to start and finish a photography project. If you have not read the previous posts on the making of “Folhas Secas”, you can easily find them by clicking on the category above “Working in projects”, underneath the title.
The featured photograph is a subsample of my heroes. Some ended up in the collection, most of them did not, but they all deserve a round of applause!
It is all about the light 
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