Basics, Deconstructed - Editing is Violence - How to Choose What Matters When Everything Looks Good

Office Hours with Patrick

Stuck on your website, portfolio, pricing, marketing, or business strategy?

Office Hours is a one-on-one, 60-ish minute conversation to help you work through whatever you’re trying to figure out. No agenda. No curriculum. No pitch. Just honest feedback, thoughtful questions, and a fresh perspective.

Learn more or book your session:

https://theterriblecreative.com/office-hours

Most photographers drown in the edit.

Not because they can't see what's good. Because they can't choose what matters.

This episode is about the violence of editing—the courage it takes to kill good images, the ego that dies in the process, and why great portfolios are built on rhythm, not range.

I tell the story of a La Jolla shoot where I took 1,900 frames in two hours and couldn't figure out which ones to keep. About losing my sense of up and down. About the underwater feeling of staring at 300 good images and having no idea which one cuts through.

And about what happened when I finally admitted I was too close to see.

This isn't about workflow. It's about authorship.

Topics:

• Why volume doesn't equal value
• The question that kills most of your images
• What actually gets destroyed in the edit (spoiler: it's not the photos)
• Editing as storytelling, not inventory
• When to admit you're too underwater to choose

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Walter Murch – Film editor (Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, The Conversation)

LINKS & RESOURCES

Website: http://terriblephotographer.com

Lessons From A Terrible Photographer (The Book): https://www.terriblephotographer.com/the-book

Support the show, buy me a coffee: https://www.terriblephotographer.com/support

Subscribe to Pub Notes (The Newsletter): https://the-terrible-photographer.kit.com/223fe471fb

Terrible Photographer on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terriblephotographer/

Patrick Fore on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patrickfore/

CREDITS

Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore

Music licensed through Epidemic Sound & Blue Dot Sessions

Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California

CONTACT

Questions? Thoughts? Hate mail?
Email me. I respond to everything.
patrick@terriblephotographer.com

Stay curious.
Stay courageous.
Stay terrible.