The Skill of Picture Editing

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 just as important, yet it’s a skill which often gets overlooked. This interactive workshop will look at editing your photographs and selecting them for different uses, from publications to exhibitions and competitions. It will include a group image critique and a practical editing session.

When I started as a photographer, no one showed or taught me how to edit my images. Yet, editing is fundamental to every aspect of photography, from your portfolio and 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 differs from sending it to a magazine or website picture editor for publication. When we edit our photographs, we usually choose our favourite ones or 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 choosing their favourite images, but favourite doesn’t equal best. Your favourites are often the images with the most or best memories attached, yet a picture editor looks only at the image without those memories.

In this workshop, you’ll be guided through choosing the most appropriate images for each use and contrasting how one image that is right for one purpose may not be for another. To help you get to grips with this, we’ll look at your images in a group critique. This exercise is highly constructive and beneficial – it is not something to be nervous about.

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

• 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
• Practical editing exercise

Students Should bring the following:

A portfolio of up to 10 images (prints or a USB drive)
Six images as jpegs on a USB drive – 4 best and two you aren’t happy with but don’t know why