Photographer/photo editor skills for your resume and career

Having strong organizational skills is essential, from organizing files and folders to properly identifying and locating exported assets and keywords. With the high volume and variety of photos, from subject matter to stylistic approaches and genre, it's imperative that a photo editor can easily locate, share, and publish photos in a timely manner.

Knowing how to receive and give feedback in a respectful tone and with sincerity. The attitude in our group and individual critique sessions at SIU is unique. I ask our students to imagine themselves as medical surgeons who are about to operate on a "patient, "and in our situation, the "patient" is the photo that they evaluate. Judgment is sidelined during this imagined role-playing game, while the desire to offer helpful guidance and assessment to improve a photo is increased. It helps students sharpen their interpersonal skills and to communicate more sharply and effectively, versus just being nice with feedback.

A good photo editor must have been a well-trained photographer with a critical eye, one who has a strongly developed sensibility to lighting, color, and composition. Being able to easily recognize weak and strong compositions and use of color and tones allows a photo editor to use editing software with guided purpose versus randomly tinkering with settings and property sliders. An experienced photo editor will be able to assess and execute the most efficient and effective technique to improve an image in a timely manner. I consider color correcting (especially skin tones of all ethnicities), tonal placement editing (burn and dodging), and masking the three most important photo editing techniques.