How a Nat Geo Photographer Selects the Best Images from a Shoot | Whittle Down | WIRED

Steve Winter has been a contributing wildlife photographer with National Geographic for over 20 years. As a wildlife photographer, Steve always has tons of photographs to sift through, and eventually whittle down. Watch as Steve lays out how he actually goes about choosing the perfect photograph.


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How a Nat Geo Photographer Selects the Best Images from a Shoot | Whittle Down | WIRED

[LesBubbles]

A lot of comments seem to mention keeping over exposed/under exposed photos. While yes, these can be fixed in post, the wildlife photography (and sometimes even other professional photography competitions) have a no-editing policy, making it about the photographer in the field rather than the editor and post processing. That is why his first round is eliminating technically faulty pictures.

[TonyisToking]

I’m surprised and intrigued by his method. Sometimes an over/underexposed shot has great framing. I often will keep it based on that alone. If you’re shooting in the right digital format, you can do a lot in Lightroom to fix it.

[kevinluongo]

Wired stays answering the questions I didn’t know I needed the answers to

[joshualane]

It’s so much simpler for me. If I take 112 photos, 105 of them are absolutely worthless. The other seven are usually varying degrees mediocre, and I just choose the least embarrassing one. If all else feels, I leave the whole pile on a hard drive and never look at them again.

[sfowler]

I think the city one is a better story...but he's right photographically the one he chose is best. Great to see his process!

[brycedelany]

I love this video. It perfectly demonstrates that what makes a good photographer isn’t just what they can do with a camera but how they analyse their images after the shoot and being able to identify the good images.

[RSpudieD]

That's really interesting and not at all what I expected him to pick. I like how much thought and explanation each decision has.

[senoir.]

He really had me in the first half with that final choice.

[annap]

I love the overall minimalist feel in the final photo and appreciate the subtle details in the light pouring in through the windows. Great choice and great video!

[ericcarabetta]

I would have gone the other way, the all white photo doesn't have enough contrast and the cat gets lost, the building one tells more of a story and the cat feels like a part of it.

[CookieSmut]

I wonder if his decision would have been different if the assignment was portraiture and not wildlife photography

[FinancialShinanigan]

I'm glad this video isn't underexposed.

[vimalalwaysrocks]

I could see Mr.Steve saying "bye-bye" to all the images in my camera right now... His criteria for good images is excellent.

[thestamsvideoproduction]

This content is golden. Too many times I go through photography albums and find loads of identical shots

[LimitedWard]

This was really enlightening! I think he made the right choice in the end. It still tells plenty of story, just not the one we were primed for.

[mats]

Very interesting for me as an amateur photograph..
Would’ve picked the other one though..

[circeus]

"And I don't like the look on its face it's kinda evil". What. Evil resting face is one of the best features of the average cat!

[terrancebrown]

Great topic. Whoever came up with this one deserves a lil bonus.

[timz]

“I don’t like the look on it’s face. It looks evil.” — That’s called a cat.

[victorpeters]

Maybe it has to do with video compression or the brightness of the video, but it seemed to me the the photographer got rid of some over or under exposed photos in the first 'round', but later in the culling process still had images on the board that could just as well be considered over or under exposed as the ones he got rid of in the first 'round'.