Overwhelmed with your photography?

It’s very easy to be overwhelmed as a photographer, especially when traveling. And yes, also with the aftermath of travels when you have to go through all of your images.

Here are a few tips to help you not be so overwhelmed.

Slow down

Stop. Breathe.

First and foremost, just slow down. Take the time to enjoy all the new things you are experiencing and seeing. Put the camera down for a while, and maybe even leave it behind for a few hours until you get your bearings. Yes, I know this is difficult but you’ll likely have your phone with you anyway. Consider it a scouting trip that first day.

Head out on a hop-on hop-off bus tour so you know where all the sites are that you want to visit. Use your phone to record what you see that catches your eye. Then when you take the time to go to those particular sites, you’ll be ready to create some amazing images.

Choose a theme or subject so you’re not overwhelmed

Still feeling overwhelmed by everything? Can’t focus on what you see in front of you because it’s all new and all beautiful?

Choose a theme or subject to focus on. It will help you slow down and concentrate on finding images that work within the theme you choose. This does not mean you won’t take images of anything else. You’ll be able to slow down your mind though and be much more deliberate in what you choose to focus on.

Help! I have thousands of images to cull and edit

Whew! Don’t we all know this happens? Talk about overwhelm. I’m still sitting on vacation images from three months ago. Never mind the countless number of photos I’ve taken over the last 10 years that are still waiting for me to go through. At least when I shot film the rolls got developed and prints were put in albums in quite a timely manner.

So, where to start?

You can apply the same concept to culling and editing that you do to creating the images. Choose a theme or subject to focus on. Or, if you prefer take your trip one day at a time. Start on the first day, cull and edit those images and then move on to the next day. If you’ve visited more than one city in one day, just start culling and editing one city at a time.

Take the time to go through your images and keyword them, if you don’t already. This will help tremendously when you want to only see your theme/subject images to start editing. For example, I’ve chosen the word window in order to start going through my summer holiday images. I’ll go through and add the keyword window to all the images that fit that subject.

Breaking it all down into smaller topics or time periods makes it so much less overwhelming to go through. This, in turn, makes it much more enjoyable.

Have a purpose for the images

As I sit here and write this article, it’s not lost on me that another way to overcome the overwhelm is to have a purpose for your images. For me, I’ve barely touched my vacation images. But, now some of them have a purpose because I need to have images to use as examples here in this article. It gave me a reason to go through and edit a few, and that’s a start.

What do I mean by having a purpose? Maybe you post regularly on social media or write blog posts about your images. Or you need them for articles and presentations. Whatever the reason is, having a purpose for your images helps motivate you to get them done.

So, what are you waiting for? It is my hope that this will help you feel a little less overwhelmed.