Filtering through your Photos for the Gold

With the advent of Digital photography we have been allowed to take as many pictures as we want without the hassle of developing them ourselves or sending our film to an outside source to make the photos usable. We just hook the camera up to a computer of some sort and extract the goods. All of that has no cost and there is no difference between importing one photo or 1000 photos other than time. This is great for the photographer because we can try anything we want without fear. This also means that much of what we try will fail and we will be left with a bloated photo library. I have found a few small things that have helped me.

Use a program to manage your library. Don't rely on folder structure.
Windows by default will download your photos into My Pictures. You can tell it if you want a new photo and what you want the name to include. While this will work to get the pictures off of your camera it doesn't give you a way to visualize your photos in reference to events or any kind of timeline. It makes it very hard to browse your photos in a meaningful way. Photo management software makes it so much easier to find the pictures that matter in your library and usually has some features built in to allow you to edit your photos to make them the best they can be. I use iPhoto because I have a Mac. If you have Windows there is Picasa for the casual user that doesn't want to pay for something and Adobe Lightroom for the feature seeker. Lightroom is also available on the Mac as is Aperture.

Don't be afraid to edit your photos. Use the Duplicate feature to make a copy if you are worried about destroying your original photo.
  I am a fan of the untouched photo. I have my share of photos that were not edited at all. Those are fun to take and will jump out to you when you see them. There are other pictures that are awesome in their own right but they need a little editing to bring them to their full potential. Let your mind's eye do the lifting here. Remember what you saw in your head when you took the picture and do what you can to try to get to that. It is amazing how much you can change a photograph just by exploring a few possibilities.

Go back in your library periodically to look at your past pictures.
Sometimes upon first inspection I don't see the value in a specific shot. Many times this is because I was looking for something else when I initially looked at the group of photos. Sometimes when I go back and look at the pictures with a fresh perspective I will see something that I missed the first time. This is where some of my best shots have come from.

Increase the scale of your printed photos when necessary
It is harder to frame large pictures but some photos need to be printed on a larger scale to get the proper effect. This is up to your judgement. Always reference the Megapixel rating on your camera for how large your pictures should be blown up to.

Hopefully this will help you out a bit. Leave me a comment if you have any other hints.

J.R.

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[WolfLea]

freelance writer