Chapter 34 — Exercises

Sharing is a craft, and like every craft in this book you learn it by doing it — by actually editing, sequencing, printing, posting, and writing, not by reading about them. Many of these exercises ask you to work with images you already have; a phone and a free account are enough for nearly all of them. Difficulty is marked ⭐ (warm-up), ⭐⭐ (core), ⭐⭐⭐ (stretch). Do at least the starred and odd-numbered ones; model answers and critiques for those appear in the book's Answers to Selected Exercises. Keep what you make — the sequence and statement you build here feed your Portfolio Checkpoint and, eventually, the Chapter 40 capstone.

Part A — Editing the body of work (the selection)

Exercise 34.1 ⭐ — Decide the number first. Take any forty of your photographs (a year, a trip, a folder). Before you look closely, commit to a number: exactly twelve. Now cut to those twelve by comparison, not by feeling — for each frame ask only "is it one of the twelve strongest?" Write two sentences on how committing to a number changed the way you chose.

Exercise 34.2 ⭐⭐ — Choose for the set, not the single image. From the twelve above, identify the one frame you love most that you should probably cut anyway — because it repeats what a stronger frame says, breaks the mood, or is merely good in a set that needs great. Write a short paragraph arguing for the cut against your own attachment. (You don't have to actually remove it — but you have to make the case.)

Exercise 34.3 ⭐⭐ — The second pair of eyes. Send your shortlist of twelve to a photographer you trust (or post it to a critique group) and ask only: "which three do you linger on, and which three would you cut?" Compare their picks to your darlings. Write what surprised you. (This is the critique skill of Chapter 31 put to work.)

Exercise 34.4 ⭐⭐⭐ — Kill your darling, for real. Build two versions of a small portfolio: one with your single most beloved (but set-weakening) image in it, one without. Show both to three people and ask which set is stronger as a whole. Report the result honestly, even if it stings. The lesson lands only if you let it.

Part B — Sequencing (the order)

Exercise 34.5 ⭐ — Three orders. Take any eight of your photographs. Lay them out and create three different sequences of the same eight images. For each, write one sentence on what story or mood that order tells. Notice that you changed nothing but the order and changed the meaning anyway.

Exercise 34.6 ⭐⭐ — First and last. From a set of your own work, choose the single best opening frame (strong, and announces what kind of work this is) and the single best closing frame (resolves or points outward). Write why each earns its position, and why your most spectacular frame probably belongs neither first nor last.

Exercise 34.7 ⭐⭐ — Make two frames talk. Find two of your photographs that, placed side by side, create a "third thing" in the gap between them — a rhyme of shape, a contrast of mood, a continued line. Describe the third thing in words. This is composing with whole photographs.

Exercise 34.8 ⭐⭐ — Build the rhythm. Sequence eight images so the set breathes: alternate loud and quiet, wide and intimate, busy and empty, so no two high-intensity frames sit together. Write the loud/quiet pattern as a row of L's and Q's and explain one transition you're proud of.

Exercise 34.9 ⭐⭐⭐ — The empty-chair ending. Deliberately end a sequence on a quiet, modest frame that means little alone but becomes an ending because of what precedes it (the way an empty chair means more after a crowd). Build the run-up that gives it that meaning. Write what the last frame "says" only because of its neighbors.

Part C — The print (Shoot This / make it physical)

Exercise 34.10 ⭐ — Order one print. Pick your single strongest image. Export it from the full-resolution master (not a web copy), upload it to a print lab, choose a paper, and order one print at a modest size. That's the whole exercise: get one photograph off the screen and onto paper. (If a lab is genuinely unavailable, a quality print at a local shop counts.)

Exercise 34.11 ⭐⭐ — Screen vs. print, side by side. When the print arrives, set it next to the same image on your phone, in normal room light. Write down every difference you see — contrast, blacks, color, sharpness, where the eye goes. Which version is more honest? What did the screen flatter?

Exercise 34.12 ⭐⭐ — Live with it. Hang or prop that print where you'll pass it for a week. Each day, note one thing you notice that you'd missed on screen (a weak corner, a tonal subtlety, a distraction). At week's end, write whether the print changed your opinion of the photograph.

Exercise 34.13 ⭐⭐⭐ — Paper matters. Order the same image on two different papers — one glossy, one matte or fine-art rag. Compare. Write which paper suits this particular photograph and why, in terms of what the image is about (punchy color vs. quiet tone). Paper is part of the photograph.

Exercise 34.14 ⭐⭐ — Size as stress test. Take an image that looks great as a thumbnail and have it printed (or view it on the largest screen you have) at a large size. Does the composition hold? Find one weakness that only appears at size, and write how you'd re-shoot or re-crop to fix it.

Part D — The portfolio site

Exercise 34.15 ⭐ — Twelve and a contact. Using any free photographer-friendly site builder, put up a live portfolio site this week with exactly one gallery of twelve sequenced images, a one-line About, and a working contact path. Ship it small and tight. Done beats perfect. Paste the URL into your notes.

Exercise 34.16 ⭐⭐ — Cut a third. Look at any existing portfolio (yours, or one you admire) and identify the weakest third of the images. Write why each belongs in the cut pile. If it's your site, actually remove them and notice how the remainder strengthens.

Exercise 34.17 ⭐⭐ — Write the alt text. For five images on your site (or five you'd post), write proper alt text — a one-line Described Photograph naming the subject and its light, specific enough for a blind visitor to picture it. No "photo," no filename. This is the Described-Photograph skill doing real accessibility work.

Exercise 34.18 ⭐⭐⭐ — The five-second test. Show your portfolio's landing to someone for five seconds, then take it away and ask: what kind of photographer is this, and what's the strongest image you remember? If they can't answer, your landing is too busy or too weak. Revise so a stranger gets it in five seconds.

Part E — Social media (deliberate distribution)

Exercise 34.19 ⭐ — Crop for the destination. Take one horizontal (e.g. 3:2) frame and crop it yourself into a 4:5 portrait and a 1:1 square, deciding where the edges fall. Compare to what the platform would do if you uploaded the original (it would crop top and bottom for you). Write which of your crops is strongest and why.

Exercise 34.20 ⭐⭐ — Pick a better metric. For your last ten posts (or ten you imagine), list the like counts — then list a better signal for each (a save, a real comment, a message, a profile visit, a print inquiry). Write which metric you'll watch from now on and why the like count misleads.

Exercise 34.21 ⭐⭐ — The look-chasing audit. Look honestly at your recent posts. Is there a "look" you've drifted toward because it performed? Name it. Then make one deliberate post in the work you actually care about, regardless of how you expect it to do. Note how it feels to put the firewall back up.

Exercise 34.22 ⭐⭐⭐ — Caption as a door. Write two captions for the same image: one a wall of hashtags and hype, one a single honest sentence that gives a viewer a way into the photograph. Explain which serves the work and which serves the algorithm — and when, if ever, the second is worth it.

Part F — The artist statement (writing about the work)

Exercise 34.23 ⭐ — Answer the four questions. For a body of your work, answer the four statement questions plainly, as if to a friend: (1) what do I photograph? (2) why this? (3) what do I want noticed? (4) how do I work? One or two sentences each. Don't write a "statement" yet — just answer.

Exercise 34.24 ⭐⭐ — Cut it to 120 words. Take your four answers, paste them together, and cut the result to a single paragraph of 120 words or fewer. Then read it aloud and rewrite any phrase that doesn't sound like you. Keep this — it's half your Portfolio Checkpoint.

Exercise 34.25 ⭐⭐ — Door or wall? Find a real artist statement online (a photographer's site, a gallery page). Decide: is it a door (it points you into the work) or a wall (jargon, inflation, no entry)? Rewrite the worst sentence in plain, concrete language.

Exercise 34.26 ⭐⭐⭐ — Situate, don't explain. Write a statement that makes a viewer look differently at your images without ever saying what a single image "means." Then test it: show one image with the statement and one without, to two people, and ask what they noticed. Did the statement change their looking?

Part G — Audience and community

Exercise 34.27 ⭐ — Commit to a cadence. Decide on a sharing rhythm you could keep for a full year even in a busy month — be conservative. Write it as a sentence ("one sequenced post every two weeks") and put it where you'll see it. Reliability beats frequency.

Exercise 34.28 ⭐⭐ — One generous act. This week, leave one specific, generous critique on another photographer's work — using the description / analysis / interpretation / judgment vocabulary from Chapter 31 — or join one photo walk or group. Write how being a participant rather than a broadcaster changed how the activity felt.

Exercise 34.29 ⭐⭐⭐ — Map your community. List the people and places that could be your photographic community (a local walk, an online genre group, two peers at your level, a critique circle). Pick one to actually show up in this month. Write what you can give it, not just get from it.

Part H — Interleaved (mixing prior chapters)

Exercise 34.30 ⭐⭐ — Prep an image end-to-end. Take one RAW capture and carry it all the way to a finished, posted image: develop it (Chapter 26), export a web copy at the right size with output sharpening in sRGB (Chapters 25, 27), crop it for a chosen platform aspect ratio, write its caption and alt text, and post or place it. Note each decision.

Exercise 34.31 ⭐⭐ — Sequence across genres. Build an eight-image sequence that deliberately mixes genres you've practiced — a portrait (Ch.13), a landscape (Ch.16), a street frame (Ch.17), a long exposure (Ch.21) — and make them cohere through sequencing and a consistent treatment. What had to be true for them to belong together?

Exercise 34.32 ⭐⭐⭐ — The red door, presented. Gather every photograph you've made of your own "red door" (the recurring subject from Chapter 1 onward) and present them as a tiny sequenced set — the same subject transformed by each skill you've gained. Write a two-sentence statement. This is the book's central claim — the subject never changed, you did — made into a portfolio piece.

Exercise 34.33 ⭐⭐⭐ — Critique your own presentation. Apply the Chapter 31 critique method to your whole portfolio site or print set (not a single image): describe what's there, analyze how the edit and sequence are structured, interpret what the set says about you, and judge how well it works. Prescribe the three highest-leverage fixes.

Part I — Settings drills & fixing failed presentations

Exercise 34.34 ⭐⭐ — Settings drill: prep for three destinations. You have one developed 3:2 landscape master. Write the exact preparation recipe — crop/aspect ratio, resize, color space, sharpening, and whether it touches the master — for each of three destinations: (a) a large matte print, (b) a portfolio-site gallery, (c) a tall social feed. State the trade-off you make at each step, and the one step that's identical across all three. (Solution-grade detail expected.)

Exercise 34.35 ⭐⭐ — Fix the photo: the soft, muddy print. A photographer ordered a 16-inch print and it came back soft, dark, and muddy in the shadows, though it looked crisp and punchy on their phone. Diagnose every likely cause and prescribe the exact re-do. (Hint: think source file, sharpening, and what a screen's glow was hiding.)

Exercise 34.36 ⭐⭐ — Fix the photo: the guillotined post. A carefully composed horizontal frame, with a person's face near the top edge, was posted to a feed that crops to 4:5 — and the published version cut the top of the head off. Diagnose what happened and prescribe two different fixes (one at posting time, one at shooting time).

Exercise 34.37 ⭐⭐⭐ — Fix the photo: the dead portfolio site. A talented photographer's site gets visitors who leave in seconds without contacting them. The site: an animated splash screen, nine galleries of forty mixed-style images each, no photo of the photographer, and a contact link buried three clicks deep. List every problem and rewrite the site's structure from scratch.

Exercise 34.38 ⭐⭐⭐ — Fix the photo: the burnout feed. A photographer posted daily for a month, exhausted themselves, went silent for three months, and now feels like a failure. Diagnose the mistake in terms of §34.6 and prescribe a sustainable plan — cadence, what to measure, and one community habit. Be specific about the numbers you'd choose and why.

Exercise 34.39 ⭐⭐ — Settings drill: rescue an old favorite for print. Choose an older image you only ever posted online and never printed. Write the full path to get it print-ready from the master (find the RAW/full-size file, re-develop for paper if needed, sharpen for print, choose paper). If the master is gone and only a small web copy survives, write what that teaches you about backup and export discipline (Chapters 30, 25).

Stretch challenge

Exercise 34.40 ⭐⭐⭐ — The full presentation, three channels. Take one tight body of work and present it three ways: as a small set of prints, as a web gallery on your portfolio site, and as a social carousel — editing, sequencing, and preparing each for its channel. Write how the same images had to be chosen, ordered, and prepared differently for each, and which channel suits this particular work best. This is the entire chapter in one project, and it is exactly the judgment Chapter 40 will ask of you for the final portfolio.

Model answers and critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises appear in the book's "Answers to Selected Exercises." Do each — actually edit, actually print, actually post, actually write — before you read them. In sharing, as in shooting, the attempt is the lesson.