Or how Instagram turned five favourite photographs into a part-time job.
When I started offering models unlimited edits from our shoots, it seemed like a good idea. And, to be fair, I still think it is. Mostly.
Photography, for me, has always been about collaboration. I enjoy working with people, experimenting with ideas, occasionally producing something wonderful and frequently discovering that an idea sounded considerably better before we actually tried it.
And I want the people I photograph to have pictures they genuinely love.
Something worth explaining is that every photograph I send to a model has already had some editing done. Often that's every single shot from the session, sometimes hundreds of them.
Before sending out the proofs, I apply basic adjustments to brightness, contrast, saturation, skin smoothing and vignetting. Much of this can be copied and pasted across the shoot, so models receive photographs that already look pretty good rather than untouched camera files.
The real work begins when they choose the photographs they want individually edited.
That means working on skin, hair, lighting, distracting backgrounds and all those little details that nobody notices until you fail to fix them. A single photograph can easily take forty minutes. Sometimes considerably longer.
In the old days, models would generally choose their favourite five or ten photographs. I'd edit them, send them off, and everyone was happy.
Then Instagram discovered the carousel.
Suddenly, choosing the best photograph from a sequence wasn't enough. Models wanted five versions of essentially the same picture. One looking at the camera, one looking slightly away, one with a different expression, and two others whose differences are apparently detectable only by the model and a forensic scientist.
Increasingly, I'm receiving requests for twenty, sometimes twenty-five, fully edited photographs from a single shoot.
Which is flattering. Very flattering, actually. Clearly, if someone wants twenty-five of my photographs, I've done something right. I'd be considerably more concerned if they struggled to find three.
But twenty-five photographs at forty minutes each represents nearly seventeen hours of editing.
And herein lies the problem.
I love taking photographs. Sitting at a computer editing them? Considerably less.
A three-hour shoot can be a wonderfully enjoyable afternoon of creativity, conversation and laughter. But when those three hours generate another seventeen hours of computer work, the balance starts looking rather peculiar.
I'm spending more than five times as long doing the part I don't particularly enjoy as the part I love.
I've always resisted limiting edits because I don't want to dictate which photographs someone should love. Sometimes a model chooses a picture I'd have overlooked entirely, and that's part of what makes collaboration interesting.
But unlimited edits were offered in a spirit of generosity, not as a challenge to discover how many hours I can spend in Lightroom before losing the will to live.
I suggested to a model recently that if having multiple versions of essentially the same photograph for Instagram carousels was so important, perhaps she might consider learning how to edit photographs herself.
I wasn't being sarcastic. Well, not entirely.
The photographs she already receives have had basic adjustments applied. If she wants another four versions of a similar image, perhaps learning a few editing techniques would be a worthwhile investment.
And I'd be perfectly happy to help her learn.
In fact, there's something quite appealing about the idea. Models already contribute enormously to the creative process through their expressions, ideas, styling and interpretation. Why shouldn't that collaboration occasionally extend to the editing?
It might even give them a greater appreciation of what goes into producing a finished photograph. And I'd probably learn something about how they see themselves in the process.
I'm certainly not proposing that every model become a Photoshop expert. Nor am I withdrawing my offer to edit the photographs they genuinely love.
I'm simply suggesting that unlimited edits shouldn't necessarily mean unlimited hours of someone else's time.
A little consideration goes a long way in any collaboration.
After all, given the choice, I'd much rather spend seventeen hours doing another five shoots with someone than sitting at home removing the same stray hair from her forehead twenty-five times.
Especially when I suspect nobody looking at her Instagram carousel would have noticed the bloody hair in the first place LOL!