If you've ever posted photos in a gallery on the web, there's a good chance that you've simply uploaded all the photos in your camera. It's quick, it's easy, and your instinct probably tells you that more is better.
Unfortunately, that probably means that your galleries have far too many photos, and most of them aren't very interesting. Taking pictures is easy, but taking good pictures takes a mixture of effort, thought, experience and luck. (The proportions of each will vary between photographers.)
Less is more
Rather than dump every photo that you have into one big gallery, you'll be much more likely to attract viewers and have them actually look through all your photos if you create smaller galleries for specific events or themes, and carefully edit the photos in each gallery down to no more than 10 or 20 images.
Nobody is likely to browse through more than that number of photos–even if the photos are all great, they'll probably only look at a handful, so you want to make sure that every photo you post is as effective as it can be. As a bonus, if you make your galleries more interesting and varied, then people will want to look at more of your photos before they leave.
Don't repeat yourself
One way to easily reduce the number of photos is to eliminate repetition. Unless you're making a gallery that's supposed to show, for instance, all the honorees at an awards banquet, there's no good reason to show multiple photos that have the same compositions or subjects. Several shots of the same people, or lots of photos of the same sort of thing (Jane and her poster, Bill and his poster, Kumar and his poster, etc.) should be edited down to show only the best image from each set.
After going through your gallery and eliminating duplicates, you might still have too many photos. In that case it's time to do a second, more discriminating pass.
If it's junk, throw it away
The second time through (you can do this in the first pass, as well), discard anything that's too dark, too washed-out, or has a weird color tint.You can also dump any photos that aren't interesting and engaging. Avoid scowling or blank expressions, pictures with no people in them, photos where everyone has their back to the camera, etc.
Remember that everyone is busy, and if you make them click through several bad photos, they're going to leave. Every picture needs to be worth the wait for it to load, and has to tell them "you're not wasting your time here."
An example of editing
For example, I've been looking at a gallery of photos from a student poster session while writing this. (With any luck, it may have been improved by the time you read this.)
The first four images in the gallery are of the same two guys looking at a poster. Nobody besides their parents really wants to see more than one of these photos, and the gallery thumbnails aren't enough to tell you which is the best one to look at. Your job as as gallery editor is to pick that one good photo, so your audience doesn't have to think about it.
After glancing through the four, I like the first or second because they're the most dynamic. My final choice would be the second photo, because the one guy's face is the most animated and happy looking in the set.
In a second pass through the gallery, it's possible that I might drop even that one if there are other photos of students looking at posters that have better lighting, composition, or expressions.
Every rule has exceptions
If you're making a gallery to show how to build something, then you don't need to have people in the photos.You still don't want to waste people's time, though, so every photo in that sort of gallery should show some important step or element, and you should choose only the photos that are absolutely necessary to help your audience understand the process.
The bottom line is to think of your galleries like a set of framed photos for your living room, not a pile of snapshots stuck randomly on your refrigerator.
For another take on this principle, read the short 37Signals blog post, "A 36:1 ratio is actually pretty good".
Author:
Hilary Mark Nelson
hmnelson@purdue.edu
