I always tell myself, (and I really try and hammer the point home) that I am not going to be in the room when people look at my images. The image has to speak for itself. No matter what my experience of that day, no matter what I went through to get that image, it doesn’t make a bit of difference to someone who’s looking at that image on his computer screen, unless the image carries the experience. For a shot to really work, it’s got to be successful pictorially and emotionally. Face it, we’re emotional creatures – I come back with these images I shot, and I’m like a six-year old in kindergarten running up to the teacher with my silly scribbling and saying, “Look what I did!” Just because I’m excited about it, doesn’t mean it’s not scribbling. So when I’m shooting, I think like my partner Denise, our photo editor. The best quality a photo editor brings to the table is dispassion. It sounds cruel, but she doesn’t give a rat’s ass if I had a bad day, or it rained, or the model was bitchy. All she cares about is the image : does it speak or does it not? If you think like a photo editor, your images will get better because you won’t go easy on yourself. You have to be your own toughest critic.
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