Biggest Secret to Improve Your Photography

EDIT: Delete the BAD pictures/ videos and make the GOOD ones even better.
That is the  one greatest secret to improving your photographic work and
your reputation.

The most important aspect of shooting photographs and videos is the editing part.  Editing your work is critical to improving your technique, learning from your mistakes and showing your best work.  Every great artist (be it a musician, writer, filmmaker or photographer) only shows their best work and the rest remains private or gets deleted.

That’s the secret to becoming better and developing a great reputation. Do not show any mediocre or poorly executed work.  There’s no need to show the world all the boring stuff.  No one wants to see everything; it’s almost insulting.

Whenever you ask someone to look at photos and videos of your trip, you are stating a few things:

• I think you’ll like what I’m going to show you.
• I realize your time is precious, but what you’re going to see is worth the effort.

You’re going to be judged by what you show.

Sure everybody might have nice, polite comments and you’ll feel like everything was just fine, but truly ask yourself is the stuff you’re showing worthy of putting your name on it. And unfortunately we all think what we are shooting IS greater than it likely is.

How do we know if our travel movies and
slideshows are going be a hit?

Well one should always be looking around at what else is out there. Try to gauge where the benchmarks are in the amateur and pro world of multimedia.  That said, it’s not easy to get an accurate feel as to what is considered good or awesome or garbage.

We’re talking about art, and art is very subjective. A good joke to me could be a dud for you, and the reaction could be similar for your trip photography.  In the end it’s a gradual educational journey you’re going to take over your entire lifetime to understand what is quality, good taste and excellence in the arts.

Well we ought to start somewhere, and the first thing I want everyone to do is please, please PLEASE do not show everything you shot on your holidays!  No one wants to look at everything, so don’t be lazy, and do an edit.

GOOD EDITING – So the first step is trash everything that is obviously bad, a mistake or redundant.  Do a quick review of what was taken on your holidays. Look for blurry photos, bad angles, images that are too dark or too light in exposure that you can’t fix on the computer.  These photos need to be deleted unless there is some personal reason you want to save them for posterity (in another folder).

Now that you’ve purged your collection, pick the best pictures, put them in a folder and make them even better by doing some basic computer photo corrections.  Fix any exposure and color problems. Do some tighter cropping and straighten out wonky images.

With video clips, if you’re not going to assemble an actual travelogue movie and wish to show a few clips, at least crop out the fat and shorten everything tighter. Never show all the raw footage, it is way too long and boring. Film makers only use a small percentage of the total footage shot and so should you.

So from now on, elevate your standards and you will certainly get more interest from others in your travels.   You need not hesitate to share your trips with friends if you do at least a simple edit. Beyond that I will cover other topics to improve on this as the year progresses.