How do you choose pictures????

[MBuzzy]

Ok, so we tried something interesting at the show this weekend. As the shots were taken, we downloaded them to the computer and let people see their pictures between their competition classes. We had them write their favorite photos down while they were doing it.

Well, when we got home and started processing the photos, first step was to go through and choose the best pictures. Obviously it isn't feasible to post all 2500 pictures in the gallery. Some aren't good, wrong poses, bad lighting, blown out background, etc.

Well, here's the kicker....when we went through and compared what we had chosen versus what the people had chosen.......

Wow. I mean, the majority of the pictures were the same, but those people chose some of the worst pictures - and of course, the ones that needed the most work to make them acceptable.

Is this just something that we learn over time or is there some way to get into the mind of a parent, sister, grandparent, or competitor???

 

[MBuzzy]

Also, should we keep letting people preview the pictures or should we just give them what we choose for them? I mean, we know what is best anyway, right?

One good thing that we found out.......there's one mother that will literally buy ANYTHING that we put out there and every single one of them.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

I've found that rarely will a model pick the shots I like. I've learned to prescreen what I show so that the ones that really suck are never shown. Saves hours of trying to save something that's just too far off target.

 

[jks9199]

Interesting question... Generally, I've always seen people presented several choices. I liked what our wedding photographer did; she gave us a CD containing the photos, and we could pretty much choose for ourselves. I don't know how much processing she did after the fact -- but she didn't take more than a couple of days, and there were LOTS of pictures!

Maybe use a small form for people to mark their choices, and room for some quick notes as to why? It might be that, even though it's a technically terrible picture, it really captures someone's eyes or their relationship with the horse... or some other thing that you wouldn't know unless they told you. They're not looking at the "quality" -- their looking at the subject, and they're being very subjective about it!

 

[MBuzzy]

For wedding photography or individual shoots, that is what we do - send them all of the proofs and they choose which ones they like. But for a show shoot, we're basically there all day long for 40+ competitor classes. She takes pictures in every class of multiple horses. By the end, there are thousands of pictures. The real problem is that there are also anywhere from 30-80 competitors. If we were to send CDs to every person, it would be a nightmare. Even posting all of those to the internet gallery would just get too big.....too much time sorting, too much time for each person to look through to find themselves, etc. So we try to get the best pictures of each person and put only those in the gallery. We may just need to start putting more into the online gallery.....

So they still get several choices. Lots and lots of choices, but we just hold a lot back also so that we control the amount of pictures that are put out there....and how many we have to photoshop.

 

[jks9199]

Seems a little to me like you're working backwards... You're taking a lot of pictures that don't necessarily have buyers. Can you "reverse" the process, and be able to focus on the people that'll be buying?

Other than that, I'd say you pretty much need to have a laptop running, and let people do some selection. Dump or block the ones that are hopelessly bad (too overexposed, underexposed, showing too much of the horse's *** or whatever), and then take "suggestions" from the buyer, maybe top two to five choices, and a disclaimer that you'll work with what you can in those or find similar shots?

 

[Jade Tigress]

I think it's a good idea to let buyers preview and choose the shots. Remove the ones that are bad due to lighting, etc. IMO, people choose pictures that they think they look best in. They are not looking at the same things the photographer is looking at. So block the ones your wife doesn't want shown that display a *bad* shot in a professional sense and let them preview the *good* ones only.

 

[ShelleyK]

This is MY take on it...Provided you have the time....you choose the best say....50 shots per competitor and let them see those shots only. Not only will this narrow down the amount of choosing time, paper work and post processing for you, it will also leave the "buyer" less overwhelmed...when you give too many options to a client, the photos will start to look the same to them. Those 50 shots will be like gold to both you and the client. IF the client wants to see more then you can direct her to a gallery that you set up for them at a later date.
Just remember its YOU as a professional that needs to choose the BEST work to be shown and sold. If you dont do this and your clients buy any old shot, and somebody that has a "professional eye" sees it, they wont think very highly of your work and you wont be recommended to more clients. I hope that I made sense!

 

[MBuzzy]

Seems a little to me like you're working backwards... You're taking a lot of pictures that don't necessarily have buyers. Can you "reverse" the process, and be able to focus on the people that'll be buying?

Other than that, I'd say you pretty much need to have a laptop running, and let people do some selection. Dump or block the ones that are hopelessly bad (too overexposed, underexposed, showing too much of the horse's *** or whatever), and then take "suggestions" from the buyer, maybe top two to five choices, and a disclaimer that you'll work with what you can in those or find similar shots?

It would certainly be nice to reverse the process, unfortunately, that is how the horse show photography business works. Basically, people will only buy the ones that they've seen. The problem is that in an open show like this, you have no idea who will and won't buy photos. Especially because there is no guarantee of great pictures of each person. With multiple horses in the ring at the same time, there are situations where a certain horse is just NEVER in a good spot (always behind another horse, performing badly, etc).

That's basically what we did this time, but only a few people came over to preview. Our worry now is that these people picked some weird pictures, so how do we be sure that we get the right ones for people to buy...

 

[MBuzzy]

I think it's a good idea to let buyers preview and choose the shots. Remove the ones that are bad due to lighting, etc. IMO, people choose pictures that they think they look best in. They are not looking at the same things the photographer is looking at. So block the ones your wife doesn't want shown that display a *bad* shot in a professional sense and let them preview the *good* ones only.

This is MY take on it...Provided you have the time....you choose the best say....50 shots per competitor and let them see those shots only. Not only will this narrow down the amount of choosing time, paper work and post processing for you, it will also leave the "buyer" less overwhelmed...when you give too many options to a client, the photos will start to look the same to them. Those 50 shots will be like gold to both you and the client. IF the client wants to see more then you can direct her to a gallery that you set up for them at a later date.
Just remember its YOU as a professional that needs to choose the BEST work to be shown and sold. If you dont do this and your clients buy any old shot, and somebody that has a "professional eye" sees it, they wont think very highly of your work and you wont be recommended to more clients. I hope that I made sense!

I think this is the best way to solve the problem, I'm hoping that between classes, my wife can just delete the ones that are noticeably bad directly from the camera, without anyone ever seeing them. then I can go get the memory card from her and make them available for viewing on the computer.

I fully agree that if we give them too many choices, it will just be overwhelming. Also, these pictures being displayed and showed around was one of the big reasons why we were even thinking about this!