Are you keeping and sharing only your very best photographs?
Or do you struggle to sift out the mediocre from the magnificent, and end up keeping the whole lot – and making most of them public?
We’ve talked before about being more ruthless with editing, and four questions to help with this.
Here’s another question that even on its own, is deceptively powerful in helping you decide which photographs to keep, and which to delete.
The question is –
If this was the first photograph of mine a new reader/viewer happened upon online, does it make the first impression I want it to?
If the answer is no, and the image you’re currently viewing with finger hovering over delete is something you’re less than proud of and doesn’t show what your capable of, then let that finger drop.
At first you might find that nine times out of 10 – or 99 times out of 100 – you delete the image.
Don’t panic. It’s ok.
Because what you’ll be left with are the very best photographs you’re currently capable of.
Which in turn will inspire you to make more photographs of the same standard in future.
For bloggers reading this, exactly the same principle applies.
Before you publish, ask yourself the same kind of question.
If this post was the first post a new reader stumbled upon, does it give a great impression of the standard of writing and photography they can expect from your blog? And does it give regular readers more of what they’ve come to enjoy?
If the answer to either of these questions is no, then maybe look at editing further – or not publishing at all.
The first time people find us, we want them to be impressed and rewarded enough to want to return, and they’ll only do that if the initial post is good enough. If it’s not, then don’t share it.
What question(s) do you ask yourself to help you decide which photographs get culled and which get shared?
Please let us know in the comments below (and don’t forget to tick the “Notify me of new comments via email” box to follow the conversation).
Thanks for looking.
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35hunter 
Ultimately if I’m not happy with a photo, I won’t share it. Recently have not been taking that many photos, so have found that I’m posting on Instagram only every few days, because my pool of new photos is rather small, and the ones I am happy with is a lot smaller. There have been a few photos that I edited and was about to share, and then I looked at them again and thought “nah!”. A very similar thing is happening with my Twitter and Facebook statues. A lot of the time, I realise that what I’m about to post isn’t really worth sharing (or potentially isn’t worth starting an argument!), so ends up getting deleted. I haven’t been blogging for very similar reasons.
Thanks Mel.
I think also there’s an inconsistency in the fruits of a photowalk. Sometimes we might walk for two hours and only get a couple of images worth sharing, other times a 15 minute walk yields five or 10 images.
We need to have a consistent expectation somehow and not just take say the best five images from every trip, because some trips are more photogenic than others, independent of the time we spend.
Oh and with blogging the “trouble” I’ve been having recently, and it isn’t trouble at all, is finishing off posts and publishing them. I keep having offshoot ideas and starting new posts, and end up with a dozen in draft that probably only need 15 mins to finish off.
I struggle because I don’t have enough ideas, and as I’m not taking photos that much, I have even less to write about. Plus, I find myself with little time for blogging these days anyway.