How client galleries are like the real estate market

Have you ever scrolled though your Facebook feed and someone posts an album of their recent trip to Cuba – you see a few preview images and then you see, in horror, the preview on the one image that says +5498 images? I don’t know about you, but I can’t tolerate more than about 40-60 of anyone’s family vacation. And that’s about how many good ones there are, and the other 5000 or so are blurry, uninteresting or duplicates. But they put’em up anyways.

Well, not you. Right?

Especially when starting out, resist the urge to put out too much “it’s ok” work, just to pad galleries. You know, you’ve labelled your favourites and you go through your catalogue and you think some aren’t bad, and you throw them into the gallery. The best scenario (read = not a good scenario) is that your clients are overwhelmed with selecting from too many images (paralysis through analysis). The worst scenario is that they tell you they are disappointed with some of the images and want a reshoot or a refund.

So here’s what’s happening:

You are thinking of buying a home. You are standing on a block with 10 beautiful homes…and then you see that one house that’s not maintained. You shake your head as you eye the uncut grass, unkept property, stuff on the lawn, or peeling paint. Will it bring the value of those other homes down? Likely not – all the others are like from a set from Stepford Wives. You may not want to be next door, but that one won’t affect the property values of the neighbourhood.

Now imagine the same scenario, but it’s 6 homes out of the 10 that are unkept and badly maintained. What would you think then of the value of the homes, and generally of the neighbourhood?

Your gallery is the block, your images are the homes. One or 2 so-so ones in a decent sized gallery won’t necessarily affect all of the images. But increase that number of the so-so ones, and you start to tip the scales. Ask yourself, when your client comes to the gallery do you want them to have the perception of a block of stunning homes, or a block of decrepit homes? Or maybe the horrid limbo in between, a block of so-so homes.

The lesson here is to give clients your best work. You may not realize it, but by adding those mediocre images, you are bringing down the value of your entire gallery. You may somehow have convinced yourself that because a card can store 64gb of data, you have to give hundreds of photos, or that clients will appreciate more choice.

Neither of these are completely true. 10 well taken, well thought out, wall-worthy images will knock people’s socks off more than 100 ok images. People do appreciate some choice, but too much choice, as mentioned above, leads to paralysis. You can feel this feeling for yourself by just going to the cereal aisle in the grocery store. Once you stare helplessly at that wall of sugar and cartoon characters, you may have an inkling of what someone might feel if they get a gallery of 250 images for a 1 hour shoot – with many similar poses.

A bonus when you’re producing top level, well-curated galleries? You immediately elevate over the sea of other photogs who upload a boatload of images of a session without much thought. And that, is good for your business.

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