I’m not always that good at picking my best photos in real time. When I take a photo, I usually know what I’m hoping for. In other words, I have pre-visualized something in my mind’s eye. But I don’t really know whether I’ve achieved what I’m hoping for, and I certainly can’t tell from my Nikon D70’s LCD display.
When I copy the results of a shoot, also called a set, from my camera’s memory card onto my hard drive, and then go through the set, sometimes photos stick out for me. In my workflow, I use Adobe Bridge for this part of the process. I try to delete real dogs–images that are out of focus (not on purpose!), and that kind of thing. I go easy on the deleting though, because I know that I’m not always able to be a good editor so close to taking the photo!
Partially, soon after I’ve created a set I think I’m swayed by my intentions when taking the photos. This means that I do pick the obvious choices, and also that some good photos get away.
One mechanism I use to catch the good ones that get away is my screen saver. I have my screen saver set to display random photos from my computer. Sometimes I see something good that way that I missed on the first pass–like this orchid, photographed back in June.