the FIVE-STAR PROJECT.

t h e   F I V E - S T A R   P R O J E C T .

My workflow with photography goes like this… I import images into my catalog, then take a first pass through them, where I give anything worth a second look a single star. Sometimes that is as far as the photographs go, but sometimes I take another pass and give ones that are better than others – particularly where I gave a star to several in a series – a second star. That then is, most times, as far as the photographs go. But indeed sometimes a few stick out above even those, and so I give them a third star. Oftentimes that is far as the photographs go, to remain quietly in my catalog, for me to pull up and look through from time to time.

Rarely, a photograph stands above all of those, and so I give it a fourth star. Currently, I have a little over forty-thousand photographs in my catalog; I have about a hundred or so that I've given four stars. Some of J, a few of the Bechstein, lots of mountains. A bunch from our wedding, and a handful from our honeymoon in New Zealand. K reading in a journal. Sunsets and alpenglows, clouds and shadows.

Of those hundred or so photographs, there are an even more rare few that, yes, get the coveted Fifth Star, the highest rating of all. And of those forty-thousand photographs, there are twenty that have five stars. Twenty. Zero-point-zero-five percent.

This project is going to pull those twenty out of my catalog and put them out into the world, with a little blurb about why or how they received a fifth star. There are stories, there is sentiment, and there are memories, all wrapped up into these twenty photographs. There are learnings, there are surprises, and there is randomness in them all. They were taken with four-megapixel point-and-shoot cameras, eight-megapixel consumer DSLR cameras with plastic lenses, and full-frame cameras with pristine prime glass. They are the reason I have multiple backups of my files. They are me, they are my family, and they are my history.

So, in no particular order, I present the Five-Star Project…