Take a few minutes to watch the video above or, if you’re more of a written word person, keep reading.
It’s not uncommon for me to come home from a trip with thousands of photographs. On a wildlife trip I can average 1,000 photographs a day, which is really easy to do when you’re in a moving boat, excited about bears and your cameras are set to shoot 10 frames a second. Even when I’m not photographing wildlife, if I’ve had a good day out with my camera I can come back with hundreds of images.
But even on those trips when I’m gone for a month and come home with 30,000 photographs, I still get home with my edits mostly done, and my development mostly finished and ready to print. Often I’ve also got a PDF monograph ready to send out to the photographers in my community.
In contrast, I have a friend who shoots trips like this and he won’t get around to doing anything with his photographs for years. Until then they will sit there on hard drives begging to be seen, to be printed, learned from, and put into some form of creative output that can be shared with the world.
Why? It’s not some kind of strategy, and he’s not giving them time to get objective about his edits. He just gets overwhelmed by it all. And he doesn’t have a system. He looks at all those images and gets paralyzed. So while I’m excitedly making prints and sequencing monographs or updating my web galleries, he and so many like him are doing…nothing with their images. No bodies of work created, no beautiful prints, no learning from their mistakes or experiencing the joy of seeing—and sharing—their finished work.
I know so many photographers who walk in the door after making a bunch of photographs and say, “Well, that was fun. Now what?”
The edit—choosing your keepers—can be so intimidating that it gets reduced to an ad hoc effort at picking a few good shots, pushing some sliders around in Lightroom, and throwing them onto Instagram before moving on to the next thing. I’ve been there.
Before I started doing assignment work, my editing was scattershot and intimidating and took forever. But client work forced me to get intentional about how I imported and organized my images, to be clear about my criteria for selecting the best of that work, and more systematic about the output.
Knowing I would be shooting for something, that my work would be used in certain ways made a big difference to me. It still does. In my personal work I know I will be making something—a book, a web gallery, a collection of prints—and that helps me make better choices about which images I shoot and how I select the best of that work.
This email is the first in a series in which I want to explore what you do with your images after the camera goes back in the bag and the ways that can make you an even stronger, more intentional, and more creative photographer when you take it out again.
The first question I want to ask (on your behalf) is this:
“How can I make the edit easier, less intimidating, or overwhelming?”
I’ve got three simple initial ideas that I think can be really helpful, and they’re a big part of how I am able to regularly come home with up to 30,000 images already mostly edited and the best of that work ready for output rather than dreading the pile of images I had yet to go through. Here are those ideas. I hope they help.
Just Look for the Best of the Best
We all photograph for different reasons and we all do things differently, but I think edits (especially the first edits done relatively soon after shooting) should be selections, not ratings. Pick them or don’t pick them, but don’t rate them. at least not at first.
My own edit process goes much more quickly because I’m not looking for every single image that meets some basic minimal technical standard. I’m looking for the ones that make me lean in. The ones that make my heart sing. The ones that grab me and won’t let me not select them.
You might have a great reason for rating images, but I think trying to decide whether an image deserves 2, 3, or 4 stars slows the process. Because I’m looking for a few frames that are a decisive “Yes!”, I’ve found rating them makes me look for the wrong thing.
For me, a 3-star image isn’t a Yes! It’s a yawn.
Consider being more binary. Yes! Or no. After all, how many images do you really need? Wouldn’t it be easier just to look for the best 12 or 24? It is for me.
Do Smaller Edits
Break it down. Make it easy on yourself. You don’t have to edit thousands of images all at once.
I do daily field edits and come home with main selections already made. This makes it manageable, but it’s more than that. Doing daily edits means things don’t get away from you. And—as a bonus—it gives you a chance to spot things that aren’t working. For example, you’re more likely to notice that you accidentally shot small JPGs all day when you thought you had been shooting RAW. Or you discover your lens isn’t focusing quite right. Or your sensor needs cleaning. It’s better to discover that after one day of shooting and be able to fix it, rather than much later on when it’s just too late.
Maybe you don’t do big multi-day projects, breaking your edits down into bite-sized pieces, perhaps into sequences or using Lightroom’s Stacking feature, can still make the process much more manageable and keep you excited, rather than doing one big exhausting edit later on. You don’t have to do it all at once and you probably should consider doing it all more than once. I have found multiple smaller edit sessions make the best of my limited resources of time and attention, which wane after a few thousand images, let me tell you!
Consider Your Output
Don’t just make photographs; make something with the photographs.
I’ve found that knowing what I’m going to do with my images has made me a much better photographer and a much better editor because I now know what I’m choosing images for.
If you know you’re going to be making a book, you’ll make different choices. If you know you want a dozen horizontal prints, again, you’ll make different choices. If you know you want a body of work that explores a theme, what you shoot and how you edit will be affected by that.
When we edit we’re asking which are the best images, but first we need to ask “best for what?” And that is entirely your choice. Just don’t let it only be best for a couple Instagram posts or a handful of random images that never leave your hard drives.
These three ideas alone will make your editing simpler:
1. Look only for the best and don’t worry about the others.
2. Do smaller bite-sized edit sessions, and
3. Consider—or make intentional choices about—what you want to do with your pictures so you can think not only about which images are best, but best for what.
I’d love to hear from you on this. Where do you find your greatest challenges when it comes to choosing your best work and doing something with them, staying organized, and doing all the work that happens beyond the shutter? If you feel like talking about it, drop me a note in the comments below.
For the Love of the Photograph,
David
