Start culling your photos for a more effective portfolio

One of the most common things I see today, especially from newer photographers is posting far too many images from a session online. We’ve all seen it, and probably all done it at some point. You go to a photographer’s page, look at their photos, and you see 50 images from one shoot, followed by 50 from another, then 50 from another.

While we’re proud of many things we create, this can really dilute our most impressive work. In this two-minute tips video, photographer David Bergman explains why we should edit ourselves and cull our work down to only the very best.

I’ve always been a big believer in only showing your best work. Even with clients that expect a large variety of images, say a wedding, nobody’s going to sit and look through 300 photos of somebody else’s wedding to decide if they’re going to hire you. They just want to see a small selection of your very best work from a variety of weddings.

And if you’re looking at commercial clients, forget sending them hundreds of images. Don’t link to a website portfolio that hundreds of shots, either. Nobody’s going to look at that. They’ll skip over you in favour of a portfolio that gets right to the point.

You want to show a variety of images that show off your abilities, styles and techniques. But you don’t need to demonstrate each one 20 times. And you don’t want to dilute that collection of amazing images with a whole bunch that are just “ok”. If people have to hunt to find your best work, the images of which you’re most proud, they’ll never see them.