Delete photos to take better ones

With a digital camera and a reasonably large memory card, you need never run out of “film” on all but the longest trips. So it’s easy to experiment with slight variations on the same shot, then come home with hundreds of pictures. Before you upload all of them to your favorite photo-sharing site, set aside time to go through these images and delete the ones that don’t measure up. Trash the obvious duds--where somebody’s head is out of focus or your finger got in the way--but also compare the 5 photos you might have taken of the same subject from the same perspective, then force yourself to choose a favorite. This is what professional photographers have to do; the exercise will leave you with a better photo album and a sharper sense of what works in a picture.

-Rob Pegoraro, Consumer Technology Columnist