The key thing to remember when it comes to your workflow is that you only have a finite amount of time.  Along with this is the idea that each picture you take represents some quantity of time.  This quantity is comprised, broadly, of these items:

1. composing the shot
2. taking the shot
3. evaluating the resulting image
4. post-processing the resulting image

Since you can take hundreds of shots at a time this quantity of time is multiplied by a large number and you can see that you’re going to invest a lot of time in this.  If you’re like me you enjoy the post-processing stage, so it’s time well spent, but remember – you only have so much of it.

As you can see from the list, these tasks are in a linear chronological order.  So the sooner you get rid of a picture the less time it will take.  This is an overriding principle to my workflow, which goes like this:

After a pleasant day of taking pictures I curl up with the camera and delete as many shots as I can.  If it’s blurry I get rid of it (unless it’s an interesting kind of blurry).  If it’s poorly composed I delete it.  If it’s completely pointless I delete it.  If I have a half-dozen identical shots I try to delete some.  Be ruthless.

But – not too ruthless.  If there’s any question at all about the shot, keep it.  I know for certain that this blurry portrait shot is worthless, so I delete it.  But the composition of this park picture, while not great, isn’t too bad – maybe – so I keep it.  The bottom line is, if you know for sure you won’t do anything with the picture, get rid of it.  Every shot you keep represents significant chunk of time.  Make sure they’re worth it.

The remaining images are then imported into whatever photo management/editing software you use.  I use Adobe’s Lightroom, so this fact might influence the remaining flow of work.  Adapt to fit your setup.  Now that you’re seeing your pictures on a larger screen you should be able to sort them into three buckets – ones you hate, ones you love, and the rest.  Get rid of the ones you hate.  Post-process the ones you love.

I am still wrestling with what to do with the rest of those pictures.  Sometimes I think I should get rid of them, but after going back and seeing something that catches my fancy months or years after first looking at the shot I don’t think that’s the answer.  And some shots have sentimental value more than artistic worth.

I then upload the ones I love to the web to share with my adoring public.

Another important activity is tagging your pictures – or imposing some sort of structure which allows you to find them again later.  After some time you will acquire quite a few images, that you have put all kinds of time into the taking and post-processing of, and it all will have been for naught if you can’t find them when you need to.

To this end, add keywords to your images if your image management software allows this.  Or come up with a clever directory scheme.  Or create an external database.  Or some sort of text document.  Something which allows you to associate an image name to some sort of description of the image.  When coming up with the keywords try to think of what sort of questions you would be asking such that this image would be the answer.  “Do I have a picture of a building at sunset that looks kind of southern?” would give you “building”, “southern”, “sunset” and possibly “architecture”.