In this lesson: Learn how to establish criteria to select your best work

To be a great photographer is not good enough. It is equally, if not more important, to be a great editor because the best photographers take a ton of photographs – many of which are not well exposed or well composed.

Clearly, making great images is only one step along the arduous way of putting together a portfolio. If bad images made by great photographers were ever to get out, then it would put their credibility at a disadvantage. Consider this as you make your own images and determine which ones you share with other people.

The first step is to develop criteria, as listed below, that will allow you to make purposeful decisions that unify the signature and ethos of your work. As you will discover, editing isn’t just about selecting the images that are aligned with your aesthetic. Editing is also about organizing your work such that it makes sense both from a visual and a conceptual standpoint.

Challenge Activity

Look back over the last 29 lessons and find what you feel are the best images you have created. When looking through your work, consider what compositional and conceptual similarities you see. In other words, under what theme could your images be organized? Your theme could be something as simple as the type of photos – portraits or landscapes, for example. It might be something far more conceptual too – such as “love” or “belonging.”

Use the list at the end of this lesson to begin organizing for your portfolio. Challenge yourself to look at your work in various ways – upside down and sideways, for example – just to observe it in a non-normative way. This would allow you to see contours, shapes, light, and other factors before you look at subject and sentiment. You can also think of this as a challenge to classify things…not unlike organizing books on a bookshelf. Any of these criteria can be used to determine if an image makes the cut into your portfolio. Any of these criteria can also be used as an overarching theme of organizing your edited photos.

Color Unity – Are there common, predominant colors that you see across your collection of photos?

Subject Matter Agreement – For example, if you’ve got a lot of portraits, are they of the same person or group of people?

Pattern and Rhythm – Do your images have a consistent pattern that you highlight? More conceptually, do they portray a certain rhythm (i.e. the hustle and bustle of city life)?

Image Format – Are the images vertical, diagonal, horizontal, square?

Chronology – Do you need to share your work in the order in which each image was taken?

Location – Were your images taken in the same geographic area?

Activity – Is there a certain activity you are photographing?

Black and White vs. Color – Can you organize your portfolio based on the presence or absence of color?

Digital Tagging and Keywording – When organizing your images, be sure to add keywords that describe each image. This will make finding your images much easier later on.