Less is more

When talking with clients about a job, a frequent question comes up: “How many photos will I get?”

I’m happy to admit my belief that “if a little is good, then a helluva lot is great,” but photography is a subtractive medium, so the question of quantity is often misguided.

Think of it this way… Everything in the world is out there somewhere, waiting to be photographed, and there are an infinite ways to approach each situation with a camera. The photographer’s choice of position, lens, film, camera settings, angle and timing all serve one purpose — namely to eliminate large numbers of potential alternates. Essentially, a good photograhper is throwing away an infinite number of alternate possibilities, forcing a single perspective upon the viewer. This is the essence of editing – telling the viewer that image X is best. Not the next frame. Not the one before. No, it’s this frame that matters.

Yet we sometimes equate quantity with value, so we haggle to get as much as possible. Wal Mart is great at driving the perception that quantity matters over quality, for example.  But it doesn’t work that way with art.  We treasure those items that are rarest and dearest to us.  Showing a small number of truly great images is better than a large number of mediocre ones.  In fact, if you surround the great images with lots of mediocre ones, one’s appraisal of the good images will drop.

This isn’t to say that a single image will always carry the day, but merely that the smallest number of images necessary to tell the story should be used. And the smaller that number, the more impact each image will have.

So if you have a group of 100 photos you’re thinking of showing someone, then take a close look at them all. Then grit your teeth and throw 99 away.