She sports her scars with pride.

If a picture has a clear differences in mood, character or shape, then it’s certainly great to put them out as it does indeed offer choice. The problem comes from those who shoot five images of someone walking out of a door, edit five pictures of someone walking out of a door and publish five pictures of someone walking out of a door. If there’s so little difference between the images that the viewer has to say “Ah, his foot is slightly closer to the ground in that frame and is touching the floor by the third frame” then you aren’t providing choice, merely visual noise to clog up the wire.

It almost feels like some photographers are so happy to get a sharp, well-exposed set of pictures that they immediately feel that they all automatically qualify as great images. In the world of photo agencies, it often feels as though some adopt the attitude of drowning out the opposition than actually providing quality. After all, if they put out 300 images from a job while a rival only puts out 25, what are the odds of the rivals images being spotted among the flood that hits the wire? If this mentality continues to a theoretical conclusion, everyone will just file every frame they take from a job and they’ll all end up on the wire. Where’s the quality control? Where’s the skill?

While I don’t blame the photographer or the agency for putting out a large selection of images, if you have to bring up a series of images into a browser to look for minute differences, there’s a problem.

In the blogging world, the issue comes from being too closely attached to your production. Unlike the world of press or PR photography, you aren’t providing the images to an editor or client so have no-one to tell you what to ditch. Self-control should leap into action at this point so that you can really illustrate your abilities in a defining image, not uploading every frame that was in focus.

Coming from your area of graphic design, many of these issues won’t apply as you’ll be buying from stock libraries that are a world unto themselves. The more images of women laughing alone with salad the better. As I hope this tries to explain, I’m only dealing with world that I work in!

Hope all’s well, bud!

PS Here’s another fine selection of stockery

I ask because I see two images of sufficient distinction as to be able to support/represent two different story slants [or spins, agendas, angles... whatever the industry parlance is].

For argument’s sake, let’s say that the top image would be suitable for a generic announcement/press release type article, “Abhishek Bachchan, seen here at the UK launch of his new film, ‘Players’, in which he stars as the cool hero blah blah blah”.

You probably wouldn’t expect to see the bottom image accompanying that story… but if the intended article’s slant was “Hey look, reader: Abhishek Bachchan, star of new film ‘Players’, is actually just the same as you, all human and fallible, what with his constant phone-checking and everything” then suddenly the bottom image becomes the more appropriate choice.

How would you know this, as a photographer?

Is it not the case that the photographer is in a less-informed position than the editor when it comes to deciding which shots to reject? Or am I wrong: do press photographers get briefed in advance as to what the story slant is going to be?

Apologies for any naivety-fuelled devil’s advocacy here; as a graphic designer I know all too well the importance of not giving your client a choice… but I suspect that the designer-client relationship differs from that of the press photographer and their client. They’re not asking you to come up with the single best solution[image], they’re asking you to gather and provide assets so that *they* can pick the single best solution[image]. Or am I wrong in at least one way? Have I grabbed the wrong end of the stick? Am I mercilessly over-analysing what was intended to be a light-hearted fluff piece?

@James – Cheers James. I’m not sure my brain could handle thinking more up. Glad it was worth it though!

More more more.