Review your photographs – Digital Photography Tip of the Week

The very first tip I wrote for the Digital Photography Tip of the Week was to not delete you images.This week I am going to ask you to review the photographs that hopefully you have not deleted.

While I generally feel that everyone is their own worst critic, it takes some discipline and awareness of what merits a good photograph to achieve this and you may or may not be at this point with your photography. But as you photograph more subjects, become more familiar with your equipment, composition and exposure, you will start to understand why some photographs are just better than others. You start to become your own judge. As you begin to review your past work, you may see an evolution to your photography skills. You may even be able to recognize specific changes in your abilities as you see photos from different time periods, ‘my composition began to improve here’ or ‘it was around this time that I began to understand why I was getting the results that I was.’ You will find photos that you loved when you shot them but now cannot see the original merit in.

Which brings me to my next point. You may also find photos that you completely ignored, but now they are asking for more attention from you. Over time, you become less attached to the events associated with the photograph and can now see the photographs with out the emotional bias that was attached to them when you first shot them. This may be because of a greater understanding and appreciation of photography, improvements in your own skill, or simply a change in your perception or tastes.

I have been posting images daily to my photo of the day site (http://potd.chrisempey.com) for the past two years. In that time I have had to go back in my own images to find a photo to post when I had been unable to shoot. Sometimes I would find a photo I previously ignored, other times I would find photos that I had previously enjoyed, but knew I could make better with some adjustments in Photoshop.

My review of my own images has revealed new found gems to me, hopefully you have saved all of your images and you can spend some time to review some of your previous photographs.

In the meantime, if you are in the upstate New York area the weekend of February 23, 24 and 25, one of the camera clubs I belong to is holding their annual convention. Our keynote speaker is Darryl Gulin, one of Canon’s Explorer of Light group plus several other very talented speakers.

Until next time, happy shooting.

Comments 1

  • I am often known to take 100 photos at a time so reviewing the photos is my first step after downloading them all. However, most of the time, I’m pretty good about just deleting the out of focus type shots or duplicates. But I do have to admit that sometimes I get a little bit too trigger happy with the delete key. And the interesting part is there was one event I attended where a professional photo kept and posted similar shots that I personally deleted.

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