Five Star Photos

I have a process for editing a batch of photos after importing them from my camera.

First pass, I mark photos that are "in frame and in focus" with two stars. The question I ask is, "is there any possible chance I'd use this photo?" This eliminates 70% of the shots I take.

Second pass, I ask, "which of these do I want to edit and ship?" and mark those with three stars. For example, if I have several shots of the same scene, I add a star only to the best frame of the sequence.

Third pass, I edit each three-star photo, mark it with four stars, then export it to Google Photos. Four stars means it's done. Every photo that I post to Instagram, send to a friend, or post on here was at some point marked with four stars.

Months later, with the benefit of distance, I review my four-star photos and add a fifth star to the shots that strike me as remarkable either because of the photo itself or the moment it captured.

These are some of my five-star photos.