Distance

Yes, if I'm just edited a photo, I'm linked to it. But I can't decide if it is good or not any more.
So, after I had slept on it for a night I have to decide again and often I'm leaving it on disk.
 
all things affect the effects, time especially, then mood, then time of day ie viewing monitor in darkness
I'm always surprised after a week or so that I did what I did
 
I often find that I need to distance myself from my photos when I'm editing them. I can't seem to get a perspective unless I just leave them for at least 24 hours and come back to them. Of course, some say even distance doesn't help but I wonder if anyone else has to do this? Just idle curiosity!

I agree entirely, in principle - but for me, for best effect, it's a fortnight; a month; sometimes longer. I usually tell myself that I'll allow a month before even transferring images from card to computer, but I almost always fail to do so.:rolleyes:

When I return, after a month, to images which I thought were good, I often find that they were not so good, and vice versa. Consequently, I now make a point of refraining from deleting images from the computer (other than VERY obvious failures) until a few weeks have elapsed. This approach sometimes brings unexpected rewards...:) (and sometimes doesn't;)).
 
I often find that I need to distance myself from my photos when I'm editing them. I can't seem to get a perspective unless I just leave them for at least 24 hours and come back to them. Of course, some say even distance doesn't help but I wonder if anyone else has to do this? Just idle curiosity!

One or two pictures get edited immediately as soon as I get back home and look through the day's work. This is a quick gut reaction, and tends to be the best ones I've shot. But I get back to the rest after at least 24 hours or more. Sometimes even a week or a month. Nowadays I'm forcing myself to think in terms of sets of images, what the narrative/mood needs to be, etc. My current ongoing project is working with a disparate set of images, not bound by "when it was shot" but instead looking at the entire volume of images I have and then trying to find a commonality between them to make a set. I haven't yet figured out what that common thread will be, I'm finding it a lot harder than stringing together a linear narrative.

So to answer your question, oh god yes!
 
That's interesting Boid, hadn't given much thought to sets/narrative not taken at the same time. I think I'll have to try that. I used to quickly delete any out of focus shots and then let the rest of them play on the LR slideshow. In this way one or two often jumped out at me straight away. With the A7R and it's millions of pixels I find that LR just can't do it, it takes far too long to set up the previews and play them so I'm finding it much more difficult. What I've learned with the Leica M is that a shot doesn't always need to be perfectly focused to have meaning and so I'm learning to look at the photos lest critically.
 
I've noticed you often shoot wide open (eg your Charlie series) so with minimal DOF it makes sense that missed focus could eliminate some shots, especially with your lovely full framer cameras. But if you can't abide the time to generate full size previews, that is a conundrum. I get the impression many full frame shooters are taking fewer but more considered shots, thus easing the editing decisions somewhat. For me mainly shooting on travels, I try to do a first pass screening within a few days, mainly because I often try 3-4 efforts at a tricky scene to experiment with focus point, exposure, or composition, and a month later I may not remember exactly why I took the repeat shots. Only the best one I will keep. Having said that I am sometimes travelling only with an iPad, and it is just not the tool to load and screen hundreds of raw files, so have to wait till the cards see my real computer.
 
i obsess immediately. then come back. then a week... come back... then 6 month later... ill come back... i am CONSTANTLY going back.. lol i just have to cut myself off eventually.. i was just looking at a flickr screen saver on my apple tv and thought "oh.. i should go ba-... BAD ELIOT! CLOSE THE SCREEN SAVER!"
 
I find I often need a minute or two away from an image to "properly" judge exposure or color changes. I'll tweak it and tweak it, think it's ok, then get pulled away for something else for two minutes. When I come back, I can see it better.
 
It can be tricky :) A lot of the time you're excited and want to see the images right away.

Sometimes you're judgement is influenced though by the experience of taking the picture.
Maybe you worked very hard on getting one particular shot, so the shot is "special" to you. But for everyone else the shot may not quite work.
Or you went out with some expectations of getting a shot, and when that didn't work out the way you hoped for, you dismiss the results (even though they may be good photos)

It can work both ways for me.
I don't have a set way of doing things though... not organized enough. Most of the time I edit within a week. But sometimes, when I go back to older shot folders, I'm surprised that I find some nice photos, that I originally dismissed...
 
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