Photographers are notorious for being poor judges of their own work.  Selecting good from bad can be torture.  What constitutes a good image is different for different people.  Often photographers get caught up in the emotion of taking a particular photo and that masks the true caliber of the image.  Sometimes I take a photo and I’m positive it’s a keeper, so when I process it later I naturally fall in love with it – even though it may only be marginal.  The most difficult task in any art form is to be truly critical of your own work.

I have a list of questions I ask myself when I edit my photos, including:

• – Would this photo be interesting to most viewers?
• – Does it document an anomaly or cultural artifact?
• – Does it tell a story and/or evoke an emotion?
• – Are there colors or interesting graphic forms that make it unique?
• – Does it have a timeless quality?
• – Is it edgy?  (If it’s not then it must be documentary photography.  Right?)
• – Is it just a snapshot, or is it something special?
• – and one more – do I really like this one and screw the rest of the world?  Oh wait…

After using these “editing filters” I’m typically left with about 10% of the photos I’ve shot.    I took 250 photos today and below are the resulting 26 images, so apparently I had a good day.  This is a collection of photos from Qingxi that I believe have passed all of these tests.  Of course some lesser photos may have slipped through the cracks because like most photographers, I’m an awful editor of my own work.