The big reset

I’m a bit of a photographer and I pride myself on taking photographs which are technically good and tell stories. I use Lightroom as a cataloging system and score many of my images using its star system: one to five (or none). I have generally just used grades three to five.

In my 20 plus years of digital photography this has resulted in some ‘grade inflation’ whereby I’ve now got about 550 five star photographs (out of a total catalogue of a little under 70,000).

I’ve felt that the system needs to adjust so that it still recognises good photographs but also can accommodate those which are extra special.

I have therefore taken all my rated photographs down a star and then gone through a process to identify which ones which now have four stars are special enough to merit five. I’ve had a go at this and I’m now down to just under 100 in this top category.

This prompts two question.

Firstly: what criteria do I use?

It starts with two stars which is for images which are technically good: in focus, decent exposure, clear subject with no distractions, horizontal horizon and vertical verticals etc. I award three stars if the image also tells a story/asks a question, has a particularly strong composition or uses colour or some other means to make an impact. It gets four stars if it meets two of these criteria and five it it’s got an element of all three.

If a photograph meets one or more of the criteria but is technically poor then it gets one star.

Of course this all a bit subjective. Suffice it to say that fives are obvious but there’s a lot of threes which could be fours and vice versa.

Secondly: how have I chosen the new fives?

It’s been a reasonably mechanical process at first. I’ve started with all my monthlies which are now fours (they would have previously been fives) and made them fives. These I’ve scanned and rejected those that aren’t that special. I’ve then looked at the other fours to see if any of them merited five. Then I’ve quickly reviewed my recent collections to see if there’s an images there which might stand out under this new regime. One or two have made the grade.

This has resulted in the five star group being reduced to just under 100 with later years scoring higher as might be expected. The 12 from 2025 are shown in the gallery below. The caption photo above is an old five which did not meet the new criteria.