Ponder this

[Jim Poor]

Face it, we're emotional creatures -- we come back with these pictures we took and we're like the six-year-old in kindergarten running up to the teacher with our scribbling and saying "Look what I did, look what I did!" Just because we're excited about it, doesn't mean it's not scribbling. . . The best quality a photo editor brings to the table is dispassion.



Joe McNally
The Moment It Clicks

This is obviously an area I need to work on, being able to look at images with detachment from the emotions that may have surrounded the moment I made them.

[Dave Phillips]

The pro editor may need to be dispassionate and dettached, but IMO never the photographer.
My passion for nature comes first.....I hope it does, and then the scribbling

but I do get the point McNally makes.....for the editor

[Steve Wheeler]

Would agree whole heartedly with Dave... Judging images is one thing... Getting up at 4:30 in the morning to be in place by sunrise when it's freezing outside is something else entirely. This is a new found passion for me... Perhaps if IT continues to develop, my scribbling will too... One can always hope.

Steve

[Jim Poor]

I don't think he was speaking of dispassion for making images, but rather for selecting which ones are good without letting our emotional attachment hide the flaws of a bad photo.

[Maxis Gamez]

To me is very simple. Not a good image?...... DELETE.

[JH Tugs]

Maxis - you are correct.

"Good" is subjective though, and I can understand the school of thought that says you need to be able to stand back and take an unemotional (i.e. critical and honest) view of your own photographs in order to make an objective decision about whether or not the image is "good" in the first place.