If you’ve taken a photograph, and you’re pleased with the result then it is natural to want to show other people. There are many reasons why people may want to share their photographs and I’m not going to go into them all. For me specifically, I share images because I’m proud of them or, I think I’ll generate more interest in my photography or, I’m obliged to share the images because I took them on behalf of someone. The later reason is easy to deal with since the decision to share or not to share is taken away from me, but the other two are not so easy.

So, I’ve worked for hours making an image that I think looks marvelous on my screen. I REALLY want to show other people because I’m so proud of it so I’m about to upload it to Flickr to share with the world and get a nice bit of back patting and maybe generate some print sales.

But wait! What if I come back tomorrow, or in a week, or in however long and don’t like this image so much any more (If you have a look at my flickr stream then you’ll see that I’ve been a victim of this, some images have merited deletion after a period of time though it’s nice to see where you’ve come from)?

What if I’ve overlooked a glaring error with it that somehow ruins the whole image?

What if it’s part of a series and, if I share it now, will the series have as much impact as a whole?

Conversely, if I don’t share it, will I miss out on print sales and that warm fuzzy feeling of validation from the “likes”, “favourites” and comments* or, importantly, some constructive criticism.

What a conundrum.

I’ve got my own solution, it may be right, it may be wrong, but it works for me at the moment. When I’ve finished an image that I think matters, i.e. one which I think has the potential to improve my portfolio, then I’ll hide it away on my hard drive and wait for at least a week. I’ll then pull it out and see if I feel the same way. If I still think it’s the bees knees then I’ll stick it on the interwebs for all to see and bask in the glory of my achievement! If that initial excitement about the image has ebbed away then I’ll see if I can do something else with it to get it back up there and then put it away again. After that cooling off period, I’ll look again and if it’s still not up to muster then it’ll head off to hard drive purgatory, unlikely ever to see the light of day again. There are of course exceptions when I really can’t decide about an image and want some feedback to help me out, or I’m trying a new technique and I can’t figure out what’s going wrong (For example, I’m trying to make cyanotypes at the moment and the results have been variable…).

Ultimately you have to decide for yourself on when to share or not. Consider why you’re sharing it though and if you’re doing yourself any favours by sharing it.

Right, I’m off to take pictures of snowboarding, some will definitely be shared, others may not

*A note on this aspect. Validation from other people has become a lot less important to me these days. IF I like it then that’s the most important thing. Constructive criticism is far more important.