Quick Tip: Keep A “To Do” Set Of Photos

To Do List

Post-processing images can take a lot longer than capturing images. I know I certainly don't have time to edit all the “good ones” after a full day of shooting. And once you have a couple thousand photos on your hard drive, how on earth can you expect yourself to remember which ones you wanted to come back to. I tackle these problems by creating a pool of “good ones” that I can come back to later. I use Picasa to organize my photos, so I created an album called “Process” that I toss the high-potentials into. This does four things for me.

  1. It relieves the stress of dealing with mass amounts of photos all at once.
  2. It allows me to keep tabs on the photos I like so I don't forget about them a week or two later.
  3. It gives me more choices of what to process when I get in one of my moods (i.e. I have to be in the right mindset to do a black & white, color, macro, busy, simple, etc.).
  4. It lets me sit on things for a while and further weed out the so-so photos, so I can focus on the better ones.

So if you don't already have a “To Do” list/pool/album/folder, you might consider trying it out. I've been doing this for about 6 or 8 months now, and I have over 300 images in the pool… half of which probably need to get out, dry off, and throw in the towel.