where do you start?

… when you’ve got about 700 pictures* and you need to select some good ones to go on the web?

Of course the task of selection is made easier (every cloud has a silver lining), because around half the images are crap.  Artless, pointless, technically incompetent, often all three – these are the pictures a five-year-old with their first disposable camera would be disappointed in. No doubt they’ll moulder on the hard disk, just because we have a vague feeling “they might come in” with a tweak in Photoshop, or if you squint and look at them a bit sideways. But the truth is they are crap and should be consigned to digital dust.

  Then there are the brilliant shots – obvious prizewinners (if only you could get around to entering them in a competition), but usually too quirky to appeal to anybody else. I often have a specific commitment to images – because of the thought that has gone into taking them, or they trigger something very specific in me – but that doesn’t mean they will appeal to other people, or conform to the current view of what is a good photograph.

Fortunately, somewhere in the middle are shots that have wider appeal, and perhaps a little artistry – technically acceptable, interesting and composed pleasingly. And there are quite a lot of these, I know there are, it’s just working out which are which….

Decide for yourself whether we made the right choices, here….

* We know this sounds like a lot, but on average it’s about fifty each a day, which isn’t too obsessive.