[steelese]

My personal opinion is less is more. I always let the client know that for an hour shoot I will have about 15 photos that they can choose from. If I am selling them the digital negatives they only get those.

This sometimes changes though. I had a photo shoot a while back for a couples engagement photographs. It was one of those days. Not the ones you have nightmares about, but the ones you dream about. I spent 2 1/2 hours with them and had easily 60 to a 100 pictures that were amazing. Light was right, they took direction, and my voice activated light/reflector stand didn't need my direction. I narrowed it down to 50, which was hard. A lot of it was trying to pick the best of a setting. From that shoot I have won 5 first place awards for different competitions.

Now this is where professionalism and business savvy come into play. What I don't want is for my clients to choose the wrong picture. A lot of my business is now referrals. In fact I pulled down my website because I honestly don't want anymore business than I have (I don't do this full time, I produce commercial video for businesses). What I want is for someone to look at that picture and want to know who did it. I want the viewer to start asking questions about the photo. If the photo looks just like everything else out there, I don't want it above a fireplace.

I think taking pictures is too easy sometimes. I talked to another very good photographer who told me if %20 of his photographs aren't keepers he is upset. I come from a film and video background. I have spent more hours slicing film or editing video than most people have ever watched television. My last documentary I filmed took me three months to film, just film, and it lasted 50 minutes. Each cassette lasts 1 hour and by the end I had 300 cassettes. that is point three percent. Really, I thought that was too much, but I needed to fill a standard length.

So as photographers, we need to be editors as well. The key to editing is making things concise and brief. If a certain pose and location didn't work out, don't show them the best one from that. Don't show them one from it at all.

All right. I have talked too much.

Thanks,