Tips for Editing and Sequencing Photos

Photography is a medium that is often characterized by groups of images, rather than just a single image. Whether it’s a book of photographs, a portfolio, an exhibition, a slideshow, or even just a website, photographs are often shown as a body of multiple images. One of the most crucial things to keep in mind when showing a body of work is how this group of images is edited, and then how it is sequenced. An art form (and job title) unto itself, photo editing is a true skill that can make or break the way an audience experiences your photographs. It’s something every photographer should be cognizant of and a tool everyone can use to elevate their photography and make sure the work is seen in the way they decide.

Much like you would edit an individual photograph—in this context, editing is the manipulation and adjustment of a single photo—editing and sequencing a group of photographs is transforming the way you see the images and how you experience certain photographs. Techniques like pacing and narrative sequence can be employed to inflict a new meaning into certain images; intensity can be heightened or tamed, and an overall arc can be created that helps viewers piece together disparate photographs in a more meaningful way. But how do you edit and sequence a body of work? There is no exact answer, but here are some tips to help you get started thinking about the process more actively.

Don’t Be Afraid to Remove Images

Starting with one of the most difficult ones, you have to work hard to get over the personal desire to include more images. Over the years, I’ve had professors and mentors give me little reminders, such as “the overall body of work is only as good as your weakest image” or “if you have any hesitation about whether or not an image should remain in an edit, then that’s a sign it should probably be cut.” All of this advice is relative, of course, and it’s still forever going to be a struggle to cut some images out of an edit due to personal affiliations and relational experiences we have with our images. The more you work on making edits of your work, though, the better you’ll get at it. Don’t be afraid to remove images; save them for another time, another series, or another occasion.

Have Someone Else Help You

Even though this is an article about working on your own editing skills, take into account that one of the most useful editing resources is a second (or third, or fourth) set of eyes. For the reasons above about becoming too attached to your own images, a fresh and neutral perspective into your work can often be truly illuminating. Others, especially those who were not with you when you made the photographs, bring an unencumbered vision to how your work is viewed and do not have the same biases and relational hang-ups that you might. They aren’t clouded by sentimentality or experience; they are more able to look at your images for what they are and offer a more accurate perspective into how anyone else will subsequently see your work. With this in mind, though, don’t forget that they are your photographs, and your edit, and you still have ultimate control over the final presentation.

Print Your Photographs

Still an essential step for me, even if the final product of my work isn’t in print, I love to work with small prints of my work when making editing and sequencing decisions. There is something special about having a tangible component to the editing process—it’s more intuitive, faster, and often leads to better results. Practically speaking, I like to make 4 x 5" prints of all of the images I’m considering for an edit. The prints don’t need to be anything special, just large enough and accurate enough that you know what the image is. Then, find the largest workspace available to you, whether it’s a kitchen counter, a dining room table, the living room floor, a desk, or wherever else. The more space you have, the better. Spread all of your prints out and begin moving them around, using your intuition. If you’re editing a general portfolio of your work, see how it feels, perhaps, to put some of those landscapes next to the portraits and play off of the contrasting subjects rather than have a repeatable rhythm of subjects. Try out new pairings and spend some time with your images in a physical and spacious way. You might be surprised how mixing up the order of a group of images might make you feel about certain work.

Use Software

I’m a strong believer in printing, but also know that that option isn’t always readily available. In those cases, the use of a handful of different applications is critical to my editing process. An essential application for my process is Adobe Bridge, available through the Creative Cloud. This strangely polarizing application is a real lifesaver for me, but for those who don’t get along with it, Adobe Lightroom can function similarly. In praise of Bridge, though, it’s a program dedicated to the organization and handling of your files; it excels in its simplicity. Your images can be displayed as a grid of thumbnails, and from here you can simply drag and drop the files into any order that you want, in similar fashion to sequencing your prints by hand. And, when you’re done, you can use Bridge’s batch rename function with a sequence number to help keep all of the rearranged files in the new order.

Another dynamic option, that’s a bit more hands-on, is Adobe InDesign, which is also part of a Creative Cloud subscription. For those not familiar, InDesign is to graphic designers as Photoshop is to photographers; it’s the standard to which all other software is compared. Even if you’re not a designer, though, there’s a key technique that can be used to help arrange photographs, especially if you are preparing for an exhibition. Using InDesign, make a new single page document with oversized dimensions (216 x 216" is the maximum size, but make the document to a useful scale for your purposes) and then insert all of the photos you are working with. From here, you have a virtual tabletop or wall on which you can move the individual image files around. This is perfect for exhibitions because you can resize and change the scale of the images on the fly with InDesign, making it easy to start developing relationships between images at different sizes, such as if your portraits were printed at 8 x 10" and your landscapes at 16 x 20".

Work Backward

Specific to sequencing images in a linear fashion, such as for a photo book or a slideshow, one of the best tips I ever received was to work backward. Most people have a tendency to put their strongest, most dynamic images at the beginning of a sequence quickly, and then slowly work downward in excitement until there is one last crescendo at the very end. It’s a very predictable and boring sequence that can make some of your quiet and subtle images feel even quieter and more subtle, resulting in viewers passing by them or ignoring them. Working backward helps to avoid this trap by shaking your natural intuition to work in a linear, narrative way. Pick the image on which you want to end your edit, and then keep adding from there, building your story from the conclusion to the introduction. Your edits will feel fresh with a more building, heightening quality that is more unexpected than the typical start strong, end strong “peaks and valley” type of edit.

Make Dummies and Tests

Finally, the most important thing to reiterate is to keep trying. Keep playing, keep making new edits, and keep experimenting. And with these new edits, it’s also necessary to realize them in useful forms that are similar to what your final form will be. If you’re editing your work for a photo book, then it’s essential to print book dummies along the way, not only to see your images in book form, but also to see your images in the scale and size of the book, and to experience the physicality of flipping through pages of your photographs. It’s the same with an exhibition—it’s a requirement that you test your prints at the scale of the final prints beforehand, to make sure they work at that specific size. Seeing your work in these close-to-finished forms will further help isolate any problem images, too, or help you see how a specific photo might be benefitted by a different sequence or scale.

What everything boils down to is having an openness to experiment with your photographs. Disassociate your feelings with them to gain a fresh perspective and don’t be afraid to get a little weird when it comes to sequencing. Playing with your images and spending time with them is an important step to all aspects of your photography practice, and it’s something that can benefit even your shooting practice, too. Do you have any tips or suggestions for editing a body of work or a portfolio? How have you assembled your groups of photographs in the past? Let us know your thoughts on editing and sequencing in the Comments field, below.