EDITING
Lessons from Broken Glass
How Deletion Can Be Your Best Tool as a Photographer
Last weekend, I learned a lesson from a minor accident I had while moving my photography exhibition from one venue to another.
In the course of trying to visualize where to hang my photographs on the walls of a busy coffeeshop — a frame that I had very foolishly let rest on a little trim-ledge on the wall teetered over and shattered as it fell to the table below, taking another frame with it upon impact.
What a great start — not even one photograph on the wall yet, and already two are unusable, as I look at my prints through the lines of shattered glass.
A few people looked over from their coffee at nearby tables and made small expressions of concern before turning back to what they were doing.
How professional of me. Also, I hadn’t brought spare glass or frames.
Instead of getting upset, I realized that all I had to do was remove two prints from the show. And it immediately came to me, the two images I needed to remove. Two of the weaker portraits in the show — I could remove the prints and mats from their frames, and use those frames to house the prints that needed a new home.
