The Skill of Picture Editing

Introduction

Making photographs is only half the process if you want to publish, exhibit, sell, or display them. Choosing the right image for its intended purpose is equally important, yet it’s a skill often overlooked. In this interactive workshop, we’ll look at how to edit your photographs and select them for different uses, from publications to exhibitions and competitions. It will include a group image critique and a practical editing session.

Workshop Description

When I started as a photographer, no one showed me or taught me how to edit my images. Yet editing is fundamental to every aspect of photography, from selecting a portfolio or website to choosing a selection to send to a picture editor for publication. Even if you aren’t professional or don’t intend to sell your photographs, it’s an essential skill needed when selecting images to print or enter competitions.

Choosing a picture for a themed competition is very different from sending one to a magazine or website picture editor for publication. When we edit our photographs, we usually choose our favourites rather than our best ones, or we edit with a particular purpose in mind—for example, which picture should I have printed to hang on the wall?

The most common mistake photographers make is choosing their favourite images because favourite doesn’t equal best. Your favourites are often the images with the most or best memories attached to them, yet a picture editor looks only at the image without those memories hidden behind it.

In this workshop, you’ll be guided through choosing the most appropriate images for each of the different uses, contrasting how one image that is right for one purpose may not be right for another. To help you understand this, we’ll be looking at your own images in a group critique. This exercise is highly constructive and really helpful—it is not something to be nervous about.

We’ll then examine a selection of images and, together in a practical editing session, choose which images work best for different uses—website, publication, exhibition, and competition. You will leave the workshop with much greater insight into editing and selecting your images.

Welcome and Introduction

1. Brief overview of the workshop agenda
2. Introduction of the instructor and participants
3. Objectives and goals of the workshop

Module 1

Organising your images

• Selecting images for a portfolio or your website
• Selecting images for publication – online and in print
• Selecting images for exhibitions and prints
• Selecting images for competitions and other uses

Module 2

Group image critique

Module 3

Practical editing exercise

• Re-editing you photographs
• Refining your portfolio or website

What Should Students Bring?

Your portfolio of up to 8 images (prints or a USB drive)
6 images as jpegs on a USB drive – 4 best and two you aren’t happy with but don’t know why
Please do not bring more images, as we won’t have time to look at them properly