2014 Top Ten Photographs Selection Process (Podcast 454)

by | Dec 29, 2014 | Art Talk, Musings, Podcast | 41 comments

With 2014 almost over, and no more shoots planned for this year, I went through my yearly exercise of selecting my top ten photographs, and today I share my selection process with you, as I believe this exercise is something that many of us can benefit from. I’ll be talking a little about each of my final selected ten images in next week’s episode.

I find it incredibly valuable to select my top ten each year. It gives us a holistic view of our year, and of course, forms a record of our achievements within that year. I really recommend that you do this yourself too, and if you do, I’d love for you to share a link to your own Top Ten once completed, via the comments section below this post. I always enjoy seeing what you’ve created as well.

If this is the first time you do this, your 2014 top ten will become your baseline. This is your stake in the ground. But if you’ve done it before, or as you move forward to future years, you can come back and compare your work to previous years, and hopefully feel that you have improved with each year.

As we discussed in The Evolution of the Photographer, if you’ve been to some amazing location in previous years, you may still feel as though that work was your best to date, but that amazing work should still elevate you to higher ground from which you shot this year’s work, and the results should hopefully be more refined and higher quality, even if you were not able to visit the best locations or find the most amazing subjects etc.

The Selection Process

You may have followed my Top Ten posts from previous years, and so some of this will be repeated, but let’s walk through the technical aspects of this exercise as well as my thoughts on the agony that I’m sure you’ll also feel as you do this. I work in Lightroom, so that’s what I’ll focus on today. If you use another piece of software you’ll have to translate for your selection process.

In the Library module I have a Collection Set called “Top Tens” and inside that I have some of my previous year Top Tens inside other Collection Sets. If you only want to save your final Top Ten for 2014, you can just create a Collection called 2014, but I like to leave a record of my selection process as well, so I use Sets.

So, inside my Top Tens Set, I create a “2014 Top Ten” Collection Set, and in there, I create a Collection called First Pass. When I create that Collection I turn on “Set as target collection” so as I look through my 2014 images, I can just hit the “B” key on the keyboard, and that image is then added to this First Pass Collection.

Because I save all of my best photos from the year into what I call a Finals folder, I don’t have to go looking in various locations for my images. I have a Finals folder with all of my best work included, and inside there, I have a year folder for every year, so it’s really easy to see find my 2014 greatest hits. Inside the 2014 Finals folder, my images are star rated so that I can easily filter out images that I don’t want to consider here.

Star Ratings

For example, if I create a black and white image, or do anything to an image in Photoshop, or any plugin that causes me to create a copy of my original raw file, I give that original raw file a 2 star rating, and save that in my Finals folder along with the processed image, so that I can always easily get back to the original if necessary. I also keep these images in my original shoot folders, which are organised into Year, Month and then Day folders, but I like having these originals along side my Final images as well.

My 3 star images is anything that I feel is good enough to show people, although it is not my best work. I also submit anything 3 star or above to OFFSET for consideration to be added to my stock library. My 4 star images are better than my 3 star. This is work that I’m more likely to show people, and use in my ebooks and magazine articles etc. My 5 star images are what I consider portfolio quality. They may not necessarily be in a portfolio, but they are my best work. The cream of the crop.

I could of course just filter out only my five star images and start there for my Top Ten selection, but I actually just filter out all of the originals, so I start from 3 star and above. The reason for this is because how I view my images is constantly changing. I can look at my 5 star images one day and think that some of them are crap, and I can go through my 3 star images and wonder why I only gave it 3 stars, so I like to include everything from 3 upwards.

If you are wondering what I use 1 star for, that’s in my original photo folders, and I call it my “once great” rating. As I’m culling down images from any given shoot, I start by giving everything I like 3 stars, and then I remove images from this set by hitting the 1 key on my keyboard, giving them a 1 star rating. I could just hit the 0 (zero) key to remove the rating altogether, but I like to leave a record of what I initially thought was any good, so my 1 star images were “once great”.

First Pass

To make my selection, I select the first image from the year in the Library, and hit the “F” key to view that image full screen. I then just try to feel my emotional reaction to each image as they appear on the screen. I try not to second guess myself, and think, I really like this, but I know it’s not going to make the grade, so I hit the “B” key for pretty much everything that makes me smile as I work through this first pass. From 2014 I have 318 three or higher star images, and my first pass resulted in 105 images, as we see in this screenshot (below).

2014 First Pass 105 photos
2014 First Pass 105 photos

If you have a handle on your image archiving to make it easy to get to your best shots for the year, getting to this point is really easy, but it starts to get more difficult from this point on. I now create another Collection inside my Set and call it Second Pass. I actually populate this second collection with all of the images from my first pass, as I find it easier to delete the one’s that I don’t want to include any more, rather than going through and selecting images again.

Second Pass

As you start your second pass, if you have any similar images at this point, it’s a good time to select all similar images, and narrow these down to as few as possible. I try to do this with images after every shoot. My objective is always to end up with as few images as I can get my selection down to. This is also similar to when I’m putting a portfolio together. Generally I start with a target number of images, or simply aim for as few as possible. These restrictions help us to be ruthless, and 10, is a pretty tight restriction if you had even a half decent year.

So, taking actually longer than it took to do my first pass, I’m now down to 58 photos in my Second Pass Collection. Now it starts to get really difficult. I am already finding it hard to let go on some of these, but I have to kill almost 5 out of each 6 images. As Zack Arias says, this process now starts to feel like lining up our children and deciding which ones to shoot.

2014 Second Pass 58 photos
2014 Second Pass 58 photos

Once again I made a third collection, and called it Third Pass, and included these 58 images, and started again. Here’s my third pass results. 30 Images. It’s time to take a break and go for a walk. Ideally, when you have the time to do this, leave your selection for a day or two. Throw these images up in a slideshow and watch as they pass by on the screen. If you feel even the slightest bit deflated as the next image appears, hit the delete key to get it out of the set.

2014 Third Pass 30 photos
2014 Third Pass 30 photos

I was hoping to be down to my top ten by now, but I ended up with a Fourth Pass Collection, containing these 20 images (below). I took these twenty and create one last collection called 2014 Top Ten. I committed to removing one out of each two of these images. I hate this part, and you probably will too, but this is not only an important part of exercise to help us evaluate our year of photography, but it it really does get you used to making difficult decisions.

2014 Fourth Pass 20 photos
2014 Fourth Pass 20 photos

I started to look at duplicates. For example, I have two crane shots left, so one had to go. Two black and white flower shots left, so one had to go. I had a very similar shot to the waterfall on the right of the second row in last year’s Top Ten, so I removed that. I still had four waterfall shots so I removed the one on the far left of the third row.

Down to 16, and I’m pacing the studio. I both love and hate this exercise. It makes me really think about my year’s work, but at the same time I resent having to remove images that I love from this set. The slideshow trick stops working. Every image that is displayed on the screen excites me, and makes me wish I was back at these locations. Of course, I’ll be back with in Hokkaido in just a week’s time with my Hokkaido Landscape Adventure with David duChemin and 14 crazy participants, followed by two Winter Wonderland Wildlife workshops with the Snow Monkeys then off to Hokkaido, which I’m seriously looking forward to, but right now, I have to look back, not forwards. Aargh!

OK, so, with just a ten image restriction, two snow monkeys is one too many. As much as I want to keep the leaping monkey, the thoughtful loving pose of the mother holding her baby in the harsh cold snow is the better image. It’s time to get rid of the Sulphur Mountain apocalyptic shot too and the Iceland Sea Stacks. I still have two Iceland waterfall shots. OK, say goodbye to the vertical one. I’m down to twelve shots. I still have two Steller’s sea eagle shots. One is more like a landscape than a wildlife shot, so I really want to leave both in. Decisions, decisions…

When I submitted two photos of the Jetty on Lake Towada to OFFSET, they chose the other one for my stock library. Does that mean I’ve got the wrong one in this collection? Who cares! It’s my art not theirs and it stays. Can’t I just do a Top Twelve instead? Nope, that’s a cop out…

I tried the slideshow once more, and got a micro-deflation from the vertical blue iceberg image, so hit delete before I changed my mind, and we now have just one to remove to get to my 2014 Top Ten. Jeez this is hard!! OK, so as much as I love it, the view of the frosty river with the cranes dancing is very similar to my old distant dance shot, and it’s the last image that I can possibly imagine not including, so it’s gone. We’re down to my Top Ten for 2014 (below).

Martin's 2014 Top Ten Photographs
Martin’s 2014 Top Ten Photographs

This was probably the hardest selection process I’ve had so far. I wasn’t consciously trying to create a balance between landscape and wildlife images, but the result actually shows pretty much the balance between these two main genres that I work in. Four wildlife shots, and four landscape shots, with the eagle at sunrise being a bit of a mix between the two. The black and white flower shot makes up the ten, and this is an important genre for me.

Art from the Heart

I’ve heard some very vocal photography figures talk about flower shots as low hanging fruit, and slam the entire genre, but I have zero time for people like that. If something brings you pleasure in your photography, do as much of it as you can, and enjoy every moment, regardless of what other people say. I don’t think anyone has the right to tell us what we should or should not shoot, or how we should or should not process the work. It’s out art, and we have to be true to ourselves, and our hearts. Art from the heart as it were.

Looking at these images, comparing them to my previous year’s top tens, I feel as though I’ve improved some. This could just be because I’m viewing these are Martin version 2014, with my current sensibilities, but I hope that it really is because my work has improved. If you’d like to see my old selections, I’ve been posting this every year since 2007, with the exception of 2010, and if you type “top ten” in the Search field in the sidebar of the blog, you will see a pull-down containing each of these years posts.

Unfortunately moving disks etc. has meant that I gradually lost my Top Ten collections from some years in Lightroom, so I’ve started to do this exercise using an external hard drive that I use on both my iMac and my MacBook Pro, so I won’t be losing these collections in future. If I can make time, I’ll go through and rebuild my final selections from each year, as I have a record here on the blog. It would be nice to go back and actually view each set of images in Lightroom too. After all, these are the fruits of our labour of love.

Share Your Top Ten

I hope you’ve found it useful to walk through the process with me this week though. I really recommend that you set some time aside to do this yourself as well, and as I said, do post a link to your selection in the comments below. I’d love to take a look, and I know that you’ll learn from the experience, especially if you’ve never done this before.

I believe that the ability to edit your images down to a finite number or the minimum possible images, is a skill that many photographers don’t develop early enough. Quite often, at some point, you’ll be asked to provide your 10 best shots for one reason or another. It could be fifty shots, or just five, and it might be from every year you’ve been shooting, not just the current year. When that happens, you could find yourself in a panic, so you might be happy that you developed these skills earlier rather than later, and if nothing else, it helps to view your progress over the years.

Fine Art Print Giveaway

Before we finish, I’d just wanted to let you know that I’ve just drawn the winner for our previous Fine Art Print Giveaway, and will be posting a 17 x 24 inch print of my Jewel on the Shore photograph to Wayne Kowalski in the U.S. tomorrow. Because I’m traveling most of the next two months, I will be drawing the next winner on March 6, 2015, and they will win a 17 x 24″ print of my Kussharo Lake Tree photograph (below). I thought this was a fitting winter print to give away, and I’ll be visiting the location where this tree used to live over the next few months too. Unfortunately, it caught a disease and was cut down the year I made this photo, so this photo is very special to me.

For details of the giveaway and to enter for your chance to win, visit our giveaway page at https://mbp.ac/giveaway.

Kussharo Lake Tree
Kussharo Lake Tree

Show Notes

March 2015 Fine Art Print Giveaway: https://mbp.ac/giveaway

Music by Martin Bailey


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41 Comments

  1. Steven James Martin

    Hi Martin, thanks for another year of fantastic podcasting! I did this process with my images about a week ago, however I chickened out and chose my ‘top 16’ of the year! Should I have narrowed this down to ten? Probably.

    Anyway, feel free to check out my selection – I’d love to hear any thoughts you have.

    http://stevenjamesmartin.com/2014review

    Happy New Year!

    Steve

    Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      Hi Steve, you’re very welcome, for the podcasts. Thanks for continuing to listen!

      Thanks for sharing your set too. Beautiful work! All very colorful, and some great expressions too. Number 8 is classic and the sadhu shots are all amazing. The entire set is very high quality. Congrats!

      A Happy New Year to you too!

      Reply
  2. Thomas Mauer

    Hi Martin, this year I followed up with all (most) of your previous podcasts. I am into photography since 2009 with an DSLR. I am not sure why I did not have pointed out to your podcast since the my DSLR beginning – but someone should have told me 🙂

    I am still an amateur looking at stuff around me, like nature, holday, etc.. I have a project which is to make pictures of a local carneval dancing group – and this is a lot of fun.

    Here are my top 10 in no peticular order:
    http://bit.ly/1tf5Rha

    Happy New Year,
    Thomas

    Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      Wow! That’s a lot to listen to Thomas. Thank you!

      Thanks for sharing your set. The puppy is amazing! What a beautiful doggy, and captured beautifully.

      A Happy New Year to you too!

      Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      Thanks Larry! I’m pleased you are enjoying the Podcast.

      Thanks for sharing your set. I think the colorful umbrella is my favorite. Great composition and colors.

      Reply
  3. Tom Cooper

    Hi Martin: Thanks for a year a podcasts and most recently for sharing your process of winnowing down photos. I have a gallery of “Best of 2014” for the year. Each photo represents a whole project, so I want to keep all of them. I look forward to seeing what others listeners have selected for their best of photos also.
    Tom Cooper
    http://www.sutophotos.com/2014_best_of

    Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      You’re very welcome Tom. Thanks for listening!

      Thanks for sharing your selection too. Number 15, the gerbera is probably my favorite. Very nice!

      Reply
  4. Janice Sullivan

    Hi Martin, just love this podcast and had to comment. This is a great idea and I really enjoyed listening to you. Happy new year!

    Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      That’s great. Thanks for dropping by Janice! Do let us know if you do your own Top Ten.

      A very Happy New Year to you too!

      Reply
  5. Gina

    Such beautiful photos Martin. Thank you for sharing with us. My favorite is the middle left. Iceland must be beautiful and this picture inspires me to write, as well as travel. Happy New Year!

    Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      Thanks Gina! That is definitely one of my favorites from the year too. I’m pleased you like it.
      I hope all is well. A Happy New Year to you too!

      Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      Thanks Eric, and thanks for sharing your set. Beautiful work. Your Öxarárfoss shot is epic!

      A Happy New Year to you!

      Reply
      • Eric Girouard

        Thanks Martin!
        Keep up the good work my friend!

        Reply
  6. Fred Kotler

    I’m a long time listener and very much enjoy learning from you. I decided to give your top ten challenge a try. You are correct: The first pass is easy. Eliminating photos once you get below 15 is very difficult. The only way I was able to do it was to make very quick decisions. But I did it. My 2014 top ten are at http://photos.kotler.org/TopTen-2014 I decided to go back and try the exercise for 2013. Those results can be found at http://photos.kotler.org/TopTen-2013

    Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      Thanks for listening Fred, and for sharing your two sets of top tens. Lovely images. I can’t get over the look in the eye of that Tawny Frogmouth in your 2014 set, and the two elephants shot from 2013 is classic. Very nice! A Happy New Year to you!

      Reply
  7. Don McGuire

    Martin, I’m always inspired by your selections each year and look forward to seeing this years crop next week. I’ve shared mine directly in the MBP Google + Community. I enjoyed the exercise — a great way to put a bow on the year.

    https://plus.google.com/104555844743016359634/posts/8PDKWWcRBkY

    Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      You’re very kind Don. Thank you!
      Thanks for sharing your set too. Wonderful images! The deer shot is incredible. The fall color and the misty morning shots are very special too. They all are.
      I know what you mean. It does feel like a great way to bring a year to closure, and create a foundation for the coming year.
      A Happy New Year to you Don!

      Reply
      • Don McGuire

        Thank you Martin. While it is on my bucket list to join your winter Wonderland tour, that particular deer image was taken from my toasty living room. Wishing you continued success and good health in the coming year!

        Reply
        • Martin Bailey

          Incredible! Now I’m even more envious. 😀

          Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      Lovely set Lois! The kitten is so cute! The Gentle Man shot and the Gossip Girls are also favorites. Very nice work all round. Thanks for sharing!

      Reply
  8. efbacon

    Thank you for sharing your 2014 picks and your culling process. One additional thing I did this year was to synch the collection of candidates with Mobile Lightroom. This way over my morning coffee, I could torture myself with which ones to leave behind. Seriously the most fruitful thing for me was an incubation period. I put them to the back of my mind and then returned after more than a day to make most of the decisions. Here is a link, I appreciate any feedback,
    http://edwardbacon.com/blog/2015/01/2014-favorite-photographs/

    Cheers,
    Ed

    Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      You’re welcome Ed. Thanks for sharing your photos too! For sure, that incubation period can really help, and Lightroom Mobile is a great way to continue the process.

      I love the colors in your Burano images! The Norway work is wonderful too. The approaching storm shot would be incredible in a strong/contrasty black and white.

      Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      Great set Lloyd! I love the colors in the Brisbane shot. The blue buildings add so much to that too.
      A Happy New Year to you too, and thanks for listening!

      Reply
  9. Paul

    Thanks for continuing your podcasts – I always love your winter shots, and I’m hoping we’ll get some snow in Toronto soon!
    For my “favourite photos” post this year I picked a few topics and a shot for each, so in the end I only posted five images @ http://henman.ca/2015/01/02/favourite-photos-of-2014/

    Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      Thanks for listening and for the kind words Paul.
      Love the car shot. Great colors and panning technique for that speedy look.

      Reply
      • Paul

        Thanks; I’m hoping to shoot more motorsport events this year.

        Reply
  10. Eric Vogt

    Martin, this annual podcast topic is always one of my favorites each year. I really enjoy seeing the top 10 photos of yours each new year, and from many of my photography friends. Here’s my favorite 10: http://www.ericvogtphoto.com/blog/2014top10

    Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      Thanks Eric. I’m pleased you continue to enjoy these.
      Your top ten is fantastic. That humming bird shot is incredible! It’s been amazing watching your photography improve over the years. I’d say this year’s are your best set to date. Congratulations, and thanks for sharing!

      Reply
      • Eric Vogt

        Thanks so much for the kind words Martin! I was quite encouraged to see the improvement I was still able to make in 2014 in spite of the little time I had to commit to photography. The simple task of putting an annual top 10 set together each new year is always exciting, as it’s exciting to see yours and other’s top 10 lists as well. Your work continues to inspire me, and I’m crossing my fingers that some day I’ll be able to join one of your tours!

        Reply
  11. Nick Nieto

    Hi Martin, congratulations on another year of wonderful images. I always enjoy listening to your workflow and effort to cull down the set to the very best. Your ten this year are fantastic, I’ll save my commentary on those for your next post. Thanks again for your podcast and inspiration!

    Feel free to see my favorite images of 2014 / http://nicknieto.com/blog/photos/favorite-images-2014/

    Reply
  12. Shane Baker

    As always, a thoughtful yet practical podcast/blog Martin. Many thanks.

    Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      Brilliant! I love the photo of Hamish after receiving his new stunt scooter. The helmet gives us a hint of what’s happening but the sheer joy on his face is golden. Excellent year Cams! Thanks for sharing!

      Reply
  13. Douglas A. Shoemaker

    Better late than never, I always say. I traveled a bit in 2014, and just got around to going through the photos and finding the good ones. Your recommended exercise was a good one, and this year I will attempt “Bailey Style” discipline and process photos shortly after shooting them.

    Thanks for all your good vibes,

    Doug

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/urban_eden/16310582610/in/set-72157650343107120/

    Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      Absolutely better late than never Doug. Great set! The clams on the rock are wild! I love the grouping and colours. Thanks for sharing!

      Reply

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