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by arvinsim 82 days ago
My process is to take a lot of photos, then ruthlessly cull them before I do any editing.

I usually keep around 10% of the total photos for editing. After that, I do another round of culling and keep only the best.

I also follow a philosophy of "good enough". If left to my own devices, I would probably endlessly edit photos.

I edit a single photo for around 3 minutes. That way, I will not feel stuck.

3 comments

I used to take a lot of photos and then cull them afterwards before editing. It worked, although I was often loving shooting and dreading editing, because before doing any actual editing, I'd have 200 photos to sift through.

After a lot of practice, I became better at culling in my head, before even taking the photos. This has shifted my relationship with photography to more of a cognitive exercise, with a different set of enjoyments. I take far fewer photos overall - often I go out with a camera and don't even take a single shot. Editing is more enjoyable because there's less to do and I already know what edits I want. It's less naively fun but more contently fulfilling.

I find it much easier to cull photos quickly now by thinking that a bad photo will unlikely become a great photo just because you edited it.

If it doesn't catch my attention on my first culling pass, I just delete without regrets.

I found myself noticing the 10% keep rate a few months back and now keep that as as shooting target. I want 30 photos from today, better capture 300 times.
This is how I use my Canon t3i. Once in awhile everything will align perfectly, require very little editing and I feel a huge sense of accomplishment.
With practice and patience, the aligning perfectly will come into your control :) Just get out there and shoot more!