The Importance of Editing

I was listening to the Magic Hour podcast this weekend as the host Jordan Weitzman spoke to photographer Mark Steinmetz. The whole episode is great but the following quote (around 19:22) really captured my attention.

Mark explained,

I’m much more interested in an edited version of photography. I believe that good photographs are extremely difficult to make. You have to, it requires a kind of careful awake mind to make a picture that contains a lot. You simply don’t see it on the Internet.

This is where I’ve been struggling. For so long I wasn’t thoughtful or careful about what or how I was shooting. Instead of working to make something good and sharing it because I thought it was good, I kept waiting for some external definition of quality.

Don’t do it for anyone else.

In the last few weeks I’ve deleted thousands of images. It wasn’t just the old, out of focus, basic images that found the recycle bin. It was the images that didn’t have anything to say to me.

It’s clear that if an image doesn’t speak to me then it has no voice to speak to anyone else.

You can find Mark’s work on his website.