Building Half Past Normal: The Trouble With Having Too Many Choices
- Half Past Normal
- Aug 18
- 4 min read
When I started Half Past Normal, I thought the difficult part would be deciding which photographs were worth showing.
It turns out that was optimistic.
The photographs are probably the easiest part.
The difficult bit is everything that comes afterwards.
A title. A crop. Colour or black and white. How much editing is enough. Whether a photograph belongs on the website at all. Whether it needs words with it. Which words? Whether those words explain too much. Where it sits alongside everything else.
Having too many choices sounds like a good problem to have, but it can make even the smallest creative decision feel strangely difficult.
And then, just when a decision feels finished, another one appears behind it.
There isn't really a right answer
That might be the hardest part.
Most of the decisions I make for Half Past Normal don't have a correct answer.
I can spend twenty minutes moving a crop by a fraction and both versions work. I can write three titles and dislike none of them. I can make an edit slightly warmer, compare it with the previous version and genuinely not know which one I prefer.
There is no useful green tick appearing to tell me I've chosen correctly.
Sometimes I wish there were.
Instead, I've had to get better at asking a different question:
Does this still feel like Half Past Normal?
That has become much more useful than asking whether something is technically perfect.
Consistency without making everything the same
This has been another unexpected challenge.
I want Half Past Normal to feel like one body of work, but I don't want every photograph to look as though it has been pushed through the same recipe.
The photographs weren't taken in the same place, on the same camera or even during the same decade. Some were deliberate. Others were taken on old phones because something caught my attention for a few seconds.
Making all of those photographs visually identical would probably create consistency.
It would also remove much of the reason I like them.
So I've found myself trying to build consistency somewhere else.
In the way I choose photographs. In how I edit them individually. In the words around them. In allowing quieter images to stay quiet rather than trying to make everything demand attention.
It's less about creating a particular look and more about recognising a particular way of seeing.
I'm still working out exactly what that is.
Every new idea creates another decision
What began as somewhere to put photographs has gradually acquired a blog, music, social accounts, print experiments and, more recently, a way of documenting how some of the photographs are edited.
Each addition has seemed perfectly sensible at the time.
Each has also produced an entirely new collection of decisions.
Should every photograph have a song?
Which photographs might work in print?
How often should I post?
Should I explain an edit or simply show the finished photograph?
How much of the process belongs publicly on the site?
At some point you realise you aren't just choosing photographs anymore. You're deciding what the thing itself is going to become.
And I'm deliberately trying not to answer that too quickly.
The temptation to make rules when there are too many choices
Rules are wonderfully attractive when you're tired of making decisions.
Use this crop.
Edit this way.
Post on these days.
Write this many words.
Use this format every time.
Problem solved.
Except eventually a photograph comes along that doesn't fit the rule.
I'm beginning to think that's a good thing.
I have created systems around Half Past Normal because otherwise managing it would become ridiculous. There are numbers, archives, workflows and schedules quietly keeping everything organised behind the scenes.
But I'm trying not to confuse the system used to manage the work with the work itself.
The Database can have rules.
The photograph doesn't necessarily need them.
Learning when to stop
Perhaps the most useful thing I've learnt so far is that a creative decision doesn't have to become permanent simply because I've made it.
I can crop a photograph differently later.
I can change a title.
I can decide something I previously overlooked deserves another look.
I can try an idea and quietly abandon it when it doesn't work.
That sounds obvious, but it removes a surprising amount of pressure.
Half Past Normal is only a few weeks old. It would be slightly ridiculous if I already knew exactly what it was supposed to look like in five years.
For now, I'm happier letting it develop photograph by photograph and decision by decision.
Even if some of those decisions take considerably longer than they probably should.
And perhaps that's part of making something rather than simply filling it.
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