Winter doesn't want to quit this year. An overnight storm left 3 1/2 inches of snow on May 2. I was surprised to see a Baltimore Oriole on my deck by the feeders. I took out an orange and he immediately returned to eat.
I put my camera on the kitchen table and took photos through the window several times during the day. When I downloaded the shots, I had over 100 images of Orioles and oranges. Most of them looked fine individually, but they were more than a bit redundant in a group. I needed to select the best without wasting a lot of time.
I put BreezeBrowser Pro in slide show mode. I ranked the entire group with a number 1 to toss and a number 4 to keep. Birds that weren't sharp or had their butt facing the camera received ones. I sorted by ranking and put all the number ones in the cull group. About 1/2 of the original group remained - about 50.
I utilized the compare feature in Breezebrowser Pro next. I selected images 4 at t time. I picked the strongest image in each group and tagged it. I paid particular emphasis on the sharpness of the oriole's eye. I moved all the untagged images into a separate directory. About 12 tagged images remained.
I used Breezebrowser to look at the entire group of remaining shots as thumbnails. When viewed this small several shots looked like exact duplicates of each other. I selected the duplicates and used slideshow mode to view them in full screen size. None of the images was an exact duplicate when viewed full size. I let the slide show loop until I determined the best image off the group. I kept the best image and removed the rest. About 6 images remained.
Lightroom could be used for these steps instead of Breezebrowser if you have plenty of patience. I don't. I loaded the remaining 6 images into Lightroom to adjust cropping, exposure and color. I deleted any image was not satisfactory in Lightroom, The shot above was one of the 6 images.
Some would call this process "Spray and Pray". I disagree. Every shot that I took was the best pose and sharpness that I could manage at the time. When is all said on done, it doesn't matter how many shots I took or how much trouble I had getting the shot. The final image is all that matters. You either like it or you don't.
