All these years of using Flickr, I have never paid the $20 that are required for a Flickr Pro account. Flickr Pro accounts allow photographers to upload an unlimited number of photos to their photostream. There are free Flickr accounts which allow photographers to upload up to 300 megabytes of data per month.
The reason I haven't upgraded is that I only show my best work…. only. I'll go out and take 2,000 images and only let three or four of those photos see the light of day. The others collect dust on my hard drive, never to be seen by mankind. Doing this has two perks: (1) it spares my friends and family from sorting through 300 photos of my son's birthday, and (2) it makes me look like a much better photographer than I really am. I'm not necessarily trying to become a famous photographer, but I still want to show my best stuff.
If all that people ever see of your photography is the 1% of your work that is absolutely perfect, they will think that you are an absolutely perfect photographer. This can be difficult to do, though. It's tricky because you have to be a good enough editor of your own work to know what the best 1% of your work is. Here are a few tips to help you select your best images after a shoot.
Photography Tip #1: When you come home from a shoot, quickly move through your shots and select only 5 to 10% of the shots. Now you can weed out the losers. Your choice is now much easier.
Photography Tip #2: LEAVE THE COMPUTER! If it was worth your time to do this shoot, it's worth your time to spend time in post-processing. After selecting about 5% of the photos that are potential contenders, leave and come back. Whenever I do this, I immediately know which photo is the winner and which ones can be tossed out. A fresh look at the photos is worth its weight in gold.
Photography Tip #3: Look at the photo and ask yourself, “What does this communicate?” Does it evoke an emotion? Does it convey a message? If you can't answer this question about your photo, it is likely that you like the photo because you worked hard to take it, or you used some cool photography technique, or because the scene made an impact on you when you were there. If the photo doesn't communicate, then it needs no medium to convey the message that it doesn't contain.
Photography Tip #4: Ask someone else what photo they prefer.
Photography Tip #5: Spend a lot of time, hours and hours, looking at good photography. This will help you to know what style you appreciate and will help you to know what type of photo impacts the viewer.
Photography Tip #6: Don't fall into the trap of thinking you can “Fix it in Photoshop.” Photoshop can make an 90% photo a 100%, but it rarely or never makes a 60% photo much better than a 70% photo. Put junk into Photoshop and you'll still have junk.
Photography Tip #7: Be ruthless. Don't be afraid to leave a photo on your hard drive. If the photo isn't absolutely perfect, delete. People will only remember your very best work and the very best side of you.
#2 and #7 totally agree.. fresh eyes, and get rid of any ‘maybe’ shots…
Liked the post and agree with all the tips because being selective with our work is very important to grow up…
I never did the upgrade to the pro account because it was a way of controlling and make choices, now is 300MB but before was only 100MB which was a good exercise.
However I still make wrong choices 😉
Hi Jim, I Agree 100% my workflow are more or less same like yours, when I download the picture to my computer I choose just the nice pictures of each sequence the other, go a way.. and then I make a 2nd pass and just c choose the winer,..
Hey, Jim. I never paid attention to the amount I could upload per month on Flickr. I didn’t upload very many photos anyway. Even still, maybe a photo day, sometimes just 4 or 5 a week. But that’s not the cool part about Flickr Pro. I had the basic account for about six or seven months before I finally made the change. I didn’t regret it at all.
Why?
Because you can see your stats. You mentioned in one of these articles about the amount of traffic going to your site. With Flickr Pro, you can see how many people are viewing your Flickr, which photos are being viewed, how many times, and WHERE THE TRAFFIC IS COMING FROM. That’s the best part. Oh, somebody googled “light painting” and found my Flickr from that? Cool.
Refreshing to hear. I wish more people would adhere to your info. When I was teaching film I told the students to shoot a roll of 36. When you get the prints back make 3 piles of quality: yes, no, maybe. Take the no’s and throw them away. Place the rest in a drawer and look at them after a week. Do the same process. Wait another week and the same process. By the end you should have maybe 2 or 3 photos that are a yes. Go ahead and enlarge those. Same holds true with digital, you just have more “no” images to throw away. The important thing is to walk away and look at them later after the emotional attachment has worn away.