Back in the old days, the film days, photographers used to shoot a roll of film, develop it, and then print a contact sheet so they could see what the images looked like and select the one or two they wanted to print.
Of course, today we can look at the images on the viewer on the back of the camera and decide whether or not to keep an image. In fact, many cameras now allow you to crop and do quick edits right in the camera. I suppose that might be ok if you didn't have much time, but I like to do the editing later when I have time to look at the images in more detail. You can't really see the details on that 3 inch screen.
The contact sheet function is now available in many image catalog/editing programs such as Lightroom. But I think there is value to taking a little more time to look at the images as a group and making your selections in the old fashioned way.
Here is a contact sheet I made up by just doing a screen capture of a portion of the Lightroom folder for this shoot.
These are not all the images I took from that session, but just a representative selection to illustrate my point.
By looking at a pseudo-contact sheet, I get a better sense of the slight variations of the different pose adjustments we made during the session. Where a couple of poses seem identical, perhaps the expression on the model's face is better in one or the other, etc. These things are surprisingly easy to spot when looking at the contact sheet.
Following the old school method, where the photographer or editor used a red wax pencil to mark the selected frames, you can do the same thing by using a red box. Of course, you can print the sheet onto a standard 8.5 x 11 paper and do it just like the old guys, if you want to waste the ink.
You can approach this a couple of different ways. First, you can just select the frames you want to work with by drawing a box around the whole frame. Second, you can actually make initial crop decisions right on the contact sheet. I think you should indicate the crop as soon as you see it, myself. When you actually crop the image later, you can make adjustments.
So, nothing earth shaking here. It's just a process to stimulate your vision as you analyze your shots. It also helps you to see what is good and bad, because they are all displayed together and the better ones are more likely to show themselves quickly.
It's just another process. Give it a try.
Find a catalog program that allows you to make initial selections - meaning you discard the shots that are out of focus, eyes shut, etc. Then display them on the screen as a group. Finally do a screen capture and then print it out on your standard printer and make your marks. Then you will be ready for final editing.
It's fun!
