At one of my old corporate jobs, our CEO had several sayings to keep us motivated. But one in particular that has withstood the test of time in my mind is “less is more.”

And now, it’s a principle I live by. Because in photography, it applies to many aspects of the job.

Case in point: two of the most common mistakes I see amateurs making when doing events are when they take the sliders in Lightroom to the edge, or when they deliver a wedding album with 1,600 pictures.

(And yes, that’s a real number from a real story from a friend of mine.)

But let’s start with the editing.

In the two pictures above: one is the RAW image, and the other is the edited one that was delivered with the final album.

I raised the shadows/exposure a bit to bring out the details in the jacket and faces, respectively. But that aside, they aren’t drastically different from out-of-camera to the edited version.

I didn’t go nuts with the saturation or sharpness to where they became orange. I merely enhanced and fixed things that needed to be fixed (such as the shadows), but that’s it.

Mind you, this is a minor/vanilla example. There are times where they need to be edited further to be acceptable (such as on a dance floor when it’s dark).

But this is where less is more comes in. Only give it what it needs. It’s possible to enhance it without making it seem unrealistic. But you have to keep your editing on a somewhat short leash.

This not only saves you hours of time in editing. It also helps prevent your client from asking you to edit them again to make their event seem like it didn’t take place in a Dr. Seuss book.

In terms of how many pictures they get…it depends.

After years of doing this, I can confidently say that give or take a few, I average around 100 pictures an hour. But that amount is after the album has been culled.

I’ll be honest…culling is my least favorite part of the process. But it’s necessary to enhance your client’s experience. There are AI programs that do it for us nowadays, but I refuse to use them. I choose to approve or deny every picture that goes in the album.

I’ve heard one too many stories where people would get 1,600 pictures back. And spoiler alert: maybe 10 of them were acceptable (and that’s a loose term here).

For my busier weddings, I maybe deliver around 700-800. But I’ve also had somewhat less busy ones where they get about 500.

But in those quantities: there aren’t piles of duplicates or missed shots. Those are all solid, in-focus shots without piles of duplicates.

Whenever I take any posed/group photo, I take two, because people blink. I delete the one were they blink, or simply pick one of the two to delete if they’re identical.

Whenever I’m taking shots of speakers at weddings, I get a few solid ones of each person (and check them as I’m taking them, since people can make some pretty funny faces when they talk). I don’t take 40 of each person and deliver every single one. A few good ones of each speaker suffices, and is preferred by both parties.

It all comes down to quality over quantity. But their experience going through their wedding album is far more enjoyable when they don’t have to spend hours shifting through hundreds of duplicates. Or having to ask me to edit the entire thing over.

Corrections can be made. But you can’t recreate the moment they open that album for the first time. So make sure it’s an experience for them that they’ll not soon forget.