Only show your best

Editing, probably one of the least loved aspects of photography. When the shoot is over and you have several hundred images to sift through, it can often feel like a chore just to get busy and get it done. Many photographers completely skip this step, showing off all the images they took.

Last week I did a session for my son. He has a profesional actor and he often models for me when I want to do some photographic experimenting. He has also worked with me on many assignments and knows how I work. He knows my rule that nobody sees their images until I have edited them.

There are many reasons for this rule.

1. I will take many exposures of the same images just to get the right expresion. I want to edit out the expresions that are not flattering to the subject.
2. I want to insure that all images with technical problems are removed of fixed.
3. The first impression and the last impression are what people will remeber about their session. Regardless of how much fun they had during the session, what they will mostly remember was if you were ready to go when they were, and how the images looked when they were presented. Therfore, only present the best from the session.
4. People tend to focus on the negative.
5. You are the profesional. Your client is counting on your opinion to help them select the best images. Showing them the "bad" images will undermine their confidence in you.

When it comes to personal images, the same thing holds true.  Make sure to edit them dwn right away.  You will be more likely to make prints from them and they will be ready to show when you want to show them.

My clients are usuall very excited after a session and are anxious to see their images. My son is no exeption. I ad to fight him off while I edited the picture, I decided to run an experiment.  I left a few of the images in that I would have otherwise deleted. True to form, he focused on the bad ones. He agreed that there were several very good images in the bunch but what about those ones. So once again, lesson learned!

Edit Your Images!

Carson Graham Cats

Some Production images of Cats put on by Carson Graham High School.  I had the pleasure of photographing the production last week during the final rehersal. The excitement level was high and they produced an amazing show.  My congratulations to their instructor Ms. Clark and their Musical director Mr. Ennis.

Congratulations to everyone involved and I look foward to next years show.

Happy New Year

Here we are at Janary 2nd, 2010.  I hope Santa was good to everyone and brought you all kinds of happiness over the Christmas break.  This new year is promising to b a busy one with lots of growth.  I will be continuing to make posts to this blog to help eveyone become better photographers. I have also started a weekly photo tip that is emailed out.  If you are interested in getting it, just send me an email at lengrinke@photolen.ca and I will add you to the list. Be sure to indicate that you want me to do this in the body of your email.

I wish everybody the very best in the new year and happy shooting.