Behind many of the best photographers is a dazzling array of the best editors. Photographers can be masters of their craft, but might not be able to edit their own work successfully. 

Editing is an art form, and a very different skill from photography. In my experience, many of the best picture editors I’ve known were never photographers. I believe that this distance from the camera gives them perspective and helps maintain a non-emotional connection with the work, allowing them to quickly cull through to the best or most important.

Editing requires one to be merciless. One too many photographs in a story can ruin the entire narrative. One wrong picture can weaken the rest of the selected images, drawing power away from the work like a loose wire. 

Putting your work in the hands of a skilled editor can be sobering, frustrating, or career-changing, and sometimes it can be all the above. Even if working with an editor isn’t something you do or plan on doing, we can learn a lot from picture editors, especially when it comes to making sense of our latest photographic year.

Learning from editors

Most of us make pictures. Most of us make a lot of pictures, some would say too many, but that’s beside the point. Over the course of a year, we might make tens of thousands of images. But as the year begins to lean toward a final chapter, we often find ourselves attempting to figure out which pictures matter and which don’t.

My typical photographic year is hard to encapsulate. I have my Blurb photographic duties, my own personal duties, and I also teach several times a year. Last year, I was in Antarctica on a personal trip, in Spain for a teaching gig, and in a host of other countries and locations as part of my Blurb job. Throw in the photographs of my life in New Mexico, family portraits, and the wide range of random imagery I always seem to end up with, and you have a puzzle of epic proportions.

This year has stacked up to be much of the same. Workshops in Germany and Morocco, birding adventures in New Mexico, two months in coastal Maine, and even more family photographs. 

Attempting to sum up an entire year can feel daunting, and rightly so, but ultimately, when all is said and done, there are only a handful of images that truly matter. The difficult part is identifying these images.

The power of the edit

Last year in Japan, I shot a total of 1,305 images. My final edit was 11, and my publication was down to 7. This year, in Morocco, I shot 1,200 images, edited them down to 10, and my first publication features those 10. 

Merciless. 

But is it really? How many images do we need to convey a point, a moment, a memory?

For years, I’ve been asked how many images you need to make a photography book. My response has always been the same: one. I feel the same about summing up my year. 

As a photographer, if you can add one or two pictures a year to your portfolio, you are doing something right. To do that, I ask: What was the absolute best image per month? Suddenly, I have a target of twelve, which makes it easier to cull my work to hit that goal of one for the year. 

Looking back to move forward

What helps me find these moments is giving myself the time to think back. What was my favorite photographic moment from Japan? A five-minute “moment” along the river in Kyoto, where I made several good pictures back-to-back. Maine was all about a full moonrise over the water with the tiny glow of a lobster boat on the horizon. Morocco was about texture and movement.

If you have trouble culling your work, think about the images that come to mind when someone asks, “How was your trip?” Typically, there will be a moment or two that stands above all others. Those, and only those, are the images you need to encapsulate your year.

When you’ve found those few meaningful moments through your merciless edit, you start to see the story of your year take shape. Each photograph earns its place, not because it’s perfect, but because it holds something essential.

Editing down to the essential also makes it easy when it comes time to create my year-end photobook. Fewer photographs mean less preparation time. Fewer photographs allow images to breathe on the page or spread. I’ll take big, bold, and beautiful over cluttered and busy.

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Hit the Books is a monthly series by Blurb’s creative ambassador, Dan Milnor. Register for creative insights and practical advice in your inbox monthly—straight from his decades of experience in the photography and self-publishing worlds.

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