Getting fewer photos from a photoshoot is actually better for your business. This seems counterintuitive. It’s tempting to assume that receiving all of the photos from a shoot puts you in the strongest position, but truth be told, it’s probably the worst outcome for your business. Good editing brings massive value to how your brand is perceived. Beyond that, no commercial photograph should be used without some level of professional post-production. (post-production is the processing of the raw files)

Average photographs are skimmed over because they are everywhere. The point of getting a suite of commercial photographs taken is to end up with images that strengthen your branding message. Not only do strong photographs make your business more noticeable in the marketplace, but really well-crafted commercial photography is easier to understand so more likely to have the impact you’d hope for. Editing is the process of refining and weeding out the average shots from a shoot and believe me, there will be plenty of those. The more stringent the editing, the more powerful the final body of photographs can be.

Commercial photography works for a number of reasons and not all of them are obvious until they are broken down and analysed. Content, composition, technical choices, lighting and how easy the image is going to be to read, are all factors in the decision-making used to make a commercially viable photograph. Having these photos vetted by a professional image maker, means that you the client, can’t make an unintentional miss step by selecting lesser images.

These files are straight out of the camera so they are a bit dark and flat but after post-production all of these images will be fit for purpose.

A photoshoot starts with a plan and each idea is developed over the span of a series of images. There will be a sweet spot where everything comes together and there will be a small number of those photos that are fully realised. The rest of the images are the chunks of rock that needed to be removed to reveal the statue. They were part of the process but not viable to represent the statue. True, there will be lots of “good” shots from a day's work but the better the editing, the stronger the chances of the shoot resulting in a powerful group of hero photographs.

I think it's fair to say that without strong editing, the quality of any photographer's work is diminished. During a shoot, I’m expecting to discard most of the photographs I take. I have to be open to trying any idea that seems viable, and the lion's share of those images will be lacking. I'm trying to do work that's at the peak of my ability and that means I'll shoot an inordinate number of variations so I have thoroughly interrogated the opportunity in front of me. These images are the work required to search for the best way to translate the brief, to tell the story required of the photograph in service of a high-quality outcome.

Without years of experience, the job of choosing the strongest few images from hundreds of shots will be both time-consuming and daunting. For me, editing is brutal and instinctive. It’s immediately obvious which images are complete and which are part of the process. Having shot the work, I’m already primed as I’ll recall which images were the exciting ones.

If a photographer offers you all of the files from a shoot you should ask them for a hefty discount as editing is baked into a photographer's fee. They are handballing a very important and time-consuming job. Without the right tools or knowledge, it's now on your shoulders to find the strongest and most suitable images. Additionally, not only will you have to store all of the files but you will be using unprocessed or under-processed photography to represent your business.

The files I shoot are called RAW files and need post-production to be viable. Think of these files as you would dough, it's on the way to becoming food but until it's baked, it's not bread. Post-production really is that big a part of creating strong photographs. Not only does it dramatically open up possibilities to improve the final photograph but most importantly, it means that your images will be equal to your competitor's professional photographs.

The real worth of a shoot is in what is not seen by the public. Poor editing means that you can have a great shoot and still end up running with average photos for your marketing. A good photographer's worth is in their ability to guide you to the strongest final image selection. Good editing is the key to achieving the goal of making impactful, refined and communicative commercially viable photographs.