Hi Rachel, <heavily snipped by Ron>
You must decide what of the pictures you take are not worth keeping and delete them. ! Only keep a sibling of an image you need when that might help repair something. Otherwise delete everything!
Just follow the DAM book. Buy it. Peter Krogh is the author.
Asher... forgive me for starting a new thread... this is sort of a new direction.
First, AFIK, Peter has not updated his book... some of the things just are not valid anymore -- In fact, I stopped reading the book seriously when I got to the part where he says 'You must use Adobe Bridge'. Even then, Photomechanic was well ahead of Bridge, and that was before the last major release of PhotoMechanic, and long before Lightrooom existed at all. But thats another story for another thread.
As for rating photos... My system for personal photos is this...
0 stars -- this simply means I have not rated the photo, or some program that the photo has been through has stripped the rating. 0 stars means garbage to many -- not me. 0 means unrated. Garbage files get deleted. Anything that is viewed for the purpose of rating gets either deleted or promoted to 1 star. So this is the perhaps the most important rating -- I can find the shots that I have not yet laid a critical eye upon.
1 star -- this means I have rated the shot, and it is worth keeping. I am very generous with this - and here is why: even for photos that are terrible today, may have some redeeming value that is usable tomorrow. See Asher's comment above about sibling photos... a perfecty ugly shot may have a patch usable skin to graft on to a sibling shot's blown out forehead. These shots don't deserve much attention otherwise.
2 stars - these photos are worthy of further attention -- perhaps a little tweak in PS or something could make these better. Or at the very least, the subject's mother would stick it on the fridge.
3 stars - I'm proud of these. They get printed and stuck to my own refrigerator door -- competing for space, of course, with my children's artwork! These are the ones I want to find quickly when my wife says... What can we use to make a wall calendar for next year?
4 stars --- these are the good ones. Worthy of great prints. Portfolio status. I wish I could return from every shoot with these, but I always aspire to do so.
5 stars -- if I ever shoot a five star photo, I'll be bragging loudly here. But don't hold your breath. I only even see 5 star photos a few times a year -- and so far, they have never been my work.
Anyway -- that's my system. What's yours?
Ron
