Before January wraps up and we move forward into 2022, I wanted to share a quick idea that was passed on to me in the Photofocus community: Compiling your annual best images and saving them for future-self critique.

Compiling your annual best images

At the end of every year, social media platforms are covered in “best-of” posts. These posts are where people share their best work from the year previous. I personally enjoy partaking in this trend. It’s a great time to go through your images and pull together a small portfolio of work from the year that was. It’s cause for reflection on a year of creating; a way to critique your own work and growth as a photographer.

It’s also a way to celebrate images that you’re proud of and share them with your community.

While commenting on one such post, I had a community member mention that he takes these posts one step further. He puts the images into a folder labeled with the year number and saves them. As he’s been doing this for a number of years, he stated that each year he could now go through the folders of “best-of” images and critique his progress on an annual basis.

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One of my favorite sunrise photos from 2021.

Organize and file

I thought this was a great strategy. To complete this, I simply went into Lightroom and created a Collection Set called “Yearly Bests.” Within that, I created a Collection called “2021,” to which I added my favorites from last year. It only took a few minutes and I plan to continue doing so every year now.

If you’re not a Lightroom user, you can save and organize your yearly favorites in whatever manner that best fits your workflow. 

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A screenshot from my 2021 yearly bests collection in Lightroom.

Of course, we can always look back on our work over time. But I like the idea of having quick access to my annual best images. Years from now it will be a great way to take stock of my progress over time. And even from year to year, I look forward to comparing images that I considered my best at the time.

Will they still stand the test of time, or had I chosen them because I was still emotionally attached to the experience of creating them? Is my style or subject matter going to change? Will advances in technology change how I take images?

Only time will tell! But I look forward to having these quick reference folders at my disposal.