Robert Watcher
Well-known member
Many years ago, I came to the conclusion that my greatest strength as a photographer - was't necessarily taking a great photograph - - - instead people and clients responded to the story that I was telling with a sequence of images. Within a small grouping as a final selection, they were able to have a feel for the complete affair or event, from start to finish.
Being able to judiciously throw away 90% of images from a given shoot, is a skill worth acquiring - if our desire is to keep viewers coming back to look at an image sequence more than once. Many times I think, it is far easier to eliminate everything by looking for the one image that stands out best. Certainly far more difficult to narrow down hundreds or thousands to a select few, in order to tell a compelling story. Especially when there may well be many really good photographs that are being trashed.
I know the challenge of brutal number crunching - but do not feel sentimental to my photographs I suppose - - - as well, I can benefit from a long time of old-school training where it was imperative to provide no more than 12 to a max of 24 images in a presentation. And when I owned my Main Street Studio, common wisdom was that 5 or 6 or maybe 10 of only the very best photographs would be displayed on the sales room walls. Same small number of prints if a portfolio was being sent to a potential commercial client.
Nowadays everyone has thousands of images posted in galleries on Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, etc.
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Being able to judiciously throw away 90% of images from a given shoot, is a skill worth acquiring - if our desire is to keep viewers coming back to look at an image sequence more than once. Many times I think, it is far easier to eliminate everything by looking for the one image that stands out best. Certainly far more difficult to narrow down hundreds or thousands to a select few, in order to tell a compelling story. Especially when there may well be many really good photographs that are being trashed.
I know the challenge of brutal number crunching - but do not feel sentimental to my photographs I suppose - - - as well, I can benefit from a long time of old-school training where it was imperative to provide no more than 12 to a max of 24 images in a presentation. And when I owned my Main Street Studio, common wisdom was that 5 or 6 or maybe 10 of only the very best photographs would be displayed on the sales room walls. Same small number of prints if a portfolio was being sent to a potential commercial client.
Nowadays everyone has thousands of images posted in galleries on Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, etc.
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