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Want to improve the quality of the photos you post on social media?

OK, this is going to sound dumb, but one way to improve the quality of photos you post on social media or on any online portfolio, is to wait. Wait? Wait for what? Wait for the experience of shooting the photo to be be forgotten. Confused?

Let me explain. When we shoot photos, we easily get wrapped up in the experience. That’s one reason we enjoy photography, we enjoy capturing images. It can be an emotional experience and we can easily correlate the experience with the outcome or the images. As a result we can be blinded towards the real quality of the photos.

For instance, if you are shooting photos of cute 2 year old child and he is being perfect. He is smiling on cue, looking at the camera, and just being adorable. You’ve just had a great experience and are pumped to download the images to see how they look. When you get to your computer and review the images they are all golden and you are convinced you are the best photographer on the planet. So, naturally you have to share all of them with the world, so they all get posted to Facebook, Tumblr, or your favorite social media.

The problem is, 6 months later you look at those photos and think to yourself “Wow, a couple of these are really nice, but there’s a lot mediocre/bad images here. What was I thinking”. You were mixing up the emotion that was felt as you were shooting with the emotion that image itself evokes. Your judgement was clouded.

The solution is to wait before you share the images. When you finish a shoot, download and backup your files immediately. After that, wait a day, or two, or ten, or more before you make judgements about the photos. There’s a good chance that your opinion will change given a little time.

Just to put things in perspective, the legendary street photographer Garry Winogrand would wait a year or two before he would develop a roll of film because he felt that time was needed so he could objectively view his work.

Now this may be a bit extreme, but I think it helps illustrate my point. Give yourself some time before deciding which photos to share because time will give you perspective and allow you to more honestly judge the quality of your work. Try it and see if you don’t become more selective about what photos you share.

Thanks for reading!

-Ken.