Would you believe me if I told you I’ve actually shot thousands upon thousands of photos since January 1st? And yet, in the past eight months… I’ve only shared 80.

So what’s the deal?

 

 

While I am, admittedly, an addict of perfectionism, that’s not the entire reason you’ve only seen less than a tenth of what I actually shoot. The real reason I share so few images is because:

  1. I often have a very specific idea for what I want the final images to look like. But sometimes it can take a few attempts for the model and I to figure out how to execute that.
  2. Sometimes the wind (or other elements) wants to participate with me… other times, it doesn’t. By taking a lot of photos in a row, you can pick the image where the elements were the most cooperative.
  3. Other times, even if I think I know what I want, a gesture the model makes does can change my mind. Continuously shooting allows me to be adaptable and to find what looks the very best.

 

 

But to get to the point of this article: once I’ve shot those 400-500 images in my session, how do I pick which images I’m going to share? Well, here’s my process:

 

1. The first thing I do is look through my images zoomed in at 100% and cull any photos that aren’t in focus. Zooming in this close makes it a LOT easier for me to tell whether or not they are in focus, which makes culling go much faster. I’ll also remove any images that are incorrectly exposed. Below, you can see an example of a photo that was out of focus, versus one that is in focus.

 

 

2. After all the out of focus and improperly exposed images are removed, I then go through my pictures a second time, and remove any image where either the model’s expression is off or things are accidentally cut out of the frame.

3. I then go through the photos for a THIRD time, this time picking out my very favorites. These are the images that, really flow and carry the viewer’s eye around the entire frame. As you can see below, the picture on the left is an image that doesn’t flow. The picture on the right does.

 

 

4. With three passes completed, I usually still have around 50 images to choose from. That’s far too many, since I typically spend 2 – 3 hours to edit each image. So at this point, I make a fourth pass, where I pick out the images where everything looks as perfect as possible. The pose is just slightly better than the other two images with similar poses. Or the light rays show up a fraction better. This is where the very small details help me to make that final decision. In the image below, the image on the left is really pretty, but I absolutely love how you can see the profile of her face with the detail in her hands in the right-hand image. It’s just slightly more intriguing.

 

 

And that is my process for picking my images! It may seem a bit tedious, but the alternative of looking at all 500 photos at once and picking my 10 favorites from there has always seemed overwhelming at best, and frankly… just impossible at other times.

So, now it’s your turn. Maybe you’re not a photographer, but I’d love to know how you cull through your “art” and pick the very best of your work to share with the world. Let me know in the comments below!