Boys & Girls at TRASH! Webster Hall on March 4

Please enjoy these photos from Trash! and Boys & Girls from last month. That's right, these photos are only a month old. The old me who took a really long time to post anything, the old me who shot something two years ago that you're still waiting to see pictures of: he's gone. In his place is the new me who's turnaround time is a lot more reasonable. I've changed!

A lot of digital photographers do that. It's so easy to take the photos but editing them becomes this giant daunting task. And the more photos we take the worse it gets. Over the weekend I had an epiphany that changed everything. If you're an event photographer who's filled with anxiety sitting on a growing pile of photos I have some advice that could change your life forever!

Focus On the Event as a Whole

I used to feel obligated to keep at last one good shot of every person who posed for me. But now I only keep the best shots. Period. See the difference? Instead of focusing on shots that best represent an individual I focus on shots that best represent the event. The result is I'm left with better shots overall.

The logic is simple. Say I took four photos of you. You were looking awesome as always and in the display the shot looks great. Unfortunately, it turns out the display lied (as it is wont to do) and when I see the shots on a bigger screen they're terrible. All of them. Would you rather I keep at least one or delete them all? I'm not doing you any favors by posting bad (by my standards) photos of you on the Internet. But let's say I keep that one photo. Now let's multiply that one bad photo by 12. So for 12 people I just couldn't get my act together and get a nice picture of them. That's 12 bad photos going into the set overall. Who wants to look at that?

I mean, okay. A lot of this is me being really hard on myself. But trust me all I see in my work are flaws and mistakes.

Do I feel bad about deleting? Yes. You were kind enough to stop and pose for me. Deleting almost sounds selfish, right? Again, you posed for me! I'm just going to have to deal with that guilt. That guilt is going to make me a better photographer. To avoid that guilty feeling I'm gonna have to step my game up and take better pictures. It's all about disciplining myself. Tough love. You know what though? The guilt of some subjects not making the cut (due to my incompetence, it's not your fault!), is better than the guilt of not posting anything at all. In a way it balances out. Or not. I just need to get better at it. But at least I'm posting photos again. It feels good!

Again, just keep in mind that I approached you because I saw something I liked. And if you don't see your photo in the set it means the photo I took didn't do you justice.