"How many photos will you take/deliver at my wedding?" or some such variant is a question often asked of photographers who for the most part seem to interpret the question as;
"Will you give me more pictures than the last person I spoke with?"
Unsure of the right answer, perhaps believing that bigger, or in this case more, is better and that offering up the highest number will help secure the booking it's not surprising that most photographers, here in the US, respond with numbers that simply boggle the mind.
Nine hundred, twelve hundred, fifteen hundred, do I hear eighteen hundred?
Yes, it's not uncommon to hear some pretty astounding figures when the "How many images?" question is asked.
Yet, unlike an auctioneer who is without doubt pleased when emotions override reason and prices reach unexpected highs, I suggest that a high number is not always the answer that our clients are seeking.
I further suggest that when questions like this are asked what is really being sought is reassurance that the photographer can actually provide the client with, in the words of a client whose wedding I'm photographing next weekend,
"I want a record of the event, not a re-creation".
How many times have you, photographer and clients, heard a statement similar to this:
"Our photographer gave us so many images that we couldn't choose and so we simply gave up"?
I know that I have heard a variant of this declaration of frustration more than a few times and I firmly believe that photographers have a part to play, if not a responsibility, in reducing or eliminating it, the frustration. They, photographers, also have a vested interest in doing so if only to speed up their production shortening delivery times and threby increasing customer satisfaction.
Eliminating fear is a good place to start.
I'm talking about the fear that one cannot record an event with less than a huge number of images. One can. Many do.
Replace that fear with confidence.
Confidence:
In oneself as a photographer who is indeed capable of recording an event with fewer images.
For myself I keep a few things in my mind as I shoot and edit;
A couple of these are Eugene Smith's comments regarding "a parking lot of images" and "Yolanda Cuomo's beautiful "You can kill a photograph or have it come alive by what it's paired with, what comes before and what comes after."
Read that again: "You can kill a photograph or have it come alive by what it's paired with..."
If we accept that delivering the strongest set of images to the client is our goal this last statement will help greatly in the process, especially the editing which is where much of the work in photography lies.
Again Eugene Smith: 'I removed them (some of my best images) from the essays I shot them for; using them would have been like putting a strong speech in the first act and throwing the whole play off balance."
For those who argue that their clients will not accept less than a given, high, number of images I suggest that is because viewers simply cannot see the gems that have been killed.
Make a decision to perform a hard edit and then look at the resultant body of work. You might well be surprised that having been given room to breathe the stronger images actually do the job they are supposed to do, and that is please the client.
Less is more.
