What to look for when choosing your Best Images

So you went on an outing with the club, and have 500 images to go through... how do you choose the best ones?

The following applies to nature mostly - Simple, clean, good sharpness, good colour, good depth of field (shallow or deep, depending on the image).

Sport and PJ are generally busy images.

This is BEFORE processing - so the better the image, the less time you will spend on processing...

THE REALLY GOOD ONES WILL JUMP OUT AT YOU. We all come back from outings and workshops with high expectations - be patient with yourself, and be wary of deleting 499 of the 500 - go back in a few weeks time, and relook - your expectations will be less, and you will be surprised at the little gems that you find when you are a bit more chilled... IF YOU HAVE 5 COMPETITION PHOTOS FROM 500, that is excellent!

Appropriate sharpness - so eyes must be sharp.

Background - how busy is it? Can you crop out the distracting stuff? Can you clone? (depending on the category - manipulation or not)

Is there a focal point to your image? Where does your eye go when you look at your image? (remember, your eye goes to the lightest part of your image)

Where is your light? Is the bird/animal facing into the shadows (not so great) or the sun (great)?

Birds - a bird on a twig is fine for junior level, but as you go up in the rankings, the bird needs to do something - beak open, something in its mouth, flying...

Light areas - are your whites burnt out? Can you get details back with camera raw? If not, it's not a competition photo...

Dark areas - are your blacks clogged? Can you get details back with camera raw? If not, it's not a competition photo...

Cutting off - don't cut off tails, wings, legs, even when you can' see them - provide enough space for the judge to "think" they are there - except in "full the frame" images - those images are close up and tend to crop off a lot of animal/person/bird.

Which way is your animal/bird/person/car facing? Allow space for them to look/run/walk into...

Noise - a bit of noise is forgiven at junior level - noise is created by high ISO levels - some cameras can handle very high ISO - remember - you can open a jpeg in camera raw in photoshop, and there is a fairly good Denoising slider - you will have to toggle between Denoising and still keeping some sharpness...

Watch out for reflections in reflective surfaces.

WHAT IS THE STORY? Your background may be beautiful, but what story are you wanting to tell the judge?