How to Edit Photos in the Field During a Multi Day Project

How to Edit Photos in the Field During a Multi Day Project

Editing Was Never Optional on This Trip

Across my seven day solo project through Mount Lassen and Mount Shasta, editing happened almost every single day, usually crammed into whatever quiet window the day offered. Sometimes that was a driving stretch between locations. Sometimes it was a short session in the van after a shoot, before exhaustion won out and I fell asleep. I never treated editing as something to save for after the trip, and I think that habit shaped the quality of the final work as much as anything I did with a camera.

I want to explain why field editing mattered so much on a project like this, because it is easy to assume editing is just a post production task that happens once the shooting is done. On a solo multi day trip, waiting until the end to look closely at your images is a genuine risk, and I learned that the hard way in small moments throughout this specific week.

Why Waiting Until the End Is Dangerous on a Long Solo Trip

The biggest risk of not editing in the field is not knowing what you actually have until it is too late to fix it. On day two, dealing with fog, a closed south entrance to Lassen, and an extra hour and a half of driving to reach the north entrance instead, I did product shots in the rain and handled commercial work back in the van. If I had waited a week to look closely at those images, I would have had no way to go back and reshoot anything that did not work, since the conditions and the location were gone by the next day.

A quick field edit lets you catch problems while you still have a chance to solve them. A composition that looked fine on a small screen in the moment but reveals a distracting element once you look closer. A product shot where the framing was slightly off. These are all fixable if you catch them the same day or the next morning. They become permanent losses if you do not notice until you are back home reviewing a week of footage all at once.

How I Actually Fit Editing Into an Exhausting Schedule

The honest answer is that field editing on this trip was never a long, careful session. It was short, targeted, and squeezed into whatever time existed. On day three, after the pre dawn shoot at Manzanita Lake, I returned to the van, did a quick edit session, and then skinned up the Lassen approach later that same afternoon. That edit session was not comprehensive. It was enough to confirm I had what I needed from the lake before moving on to the next task of the day.

Driving days ended up being some of the most useful editing windows of the whole trip. Between locations, with nothing else demanding my attention, I could review footage from the day before, flag anything that concerned me, and mentally note what still needed to be captured. That habit meant I rarely arrived at a new location without a clear sense of what gaps remained from the previous stop.

What Field Editing Looks Like in Practice

I want to be clear that field editing on a trip like this is not the same as a full post production pass. It is a lighter, faster process focused on a few specific questions. Did I actually get the shot I thought I got. Is anything technically wrong, like focus or exposure, that I could still fix by reshooting. Am I missing anything a brand client specifically needs that I have not addressed yet. Answering those questions quickly, even on a small screen in a moving van, catches most of the problems that matter.

I resisted the urge to do detailed color work or heavy retouching in the field. That kind of editing takes real time and real focus, neither of which I had much of on a trip this physically demanding. Field editing was strictly about verification and gap checking, not about producing finished images. The finished editing happened later, once the trip was over and I had the time and mental space to do it properly.

I also kept the process simple on purpose, usually just reviewing images directly on the camera screen or a small laptop rather than building any kind of elaborate field workflow. A complicated system is one more thing to manage on a trip that already demanded constant attention to weather, terrain, and safety. The simplest version of field editing that still answered my core questions was always the right version for this particular trip.

How This Habit Paid Off on the Hardest Days

The value of this habit became clearest on the Shasta leg of the trip. After the long carry into Horse Camp, where I ended up needing a second load for my tripod, camera kit, and the brand products from Crazy Creek and Out There, I used a quiet moment that evening to review what I had captured so far. That review is part of what made me realize I had not documented the actual mistake that caused the second trip, which led me to intentionally capture that story the next morning instead of losing it entirely.

After summit day, back at camp reviewing photos before deciding to pack out the same day, that same habit gave me confidence that I had what I needed from the climb, the rescue situation, and the summit itself. Without that review, I might have felt pressure to stay another night just to be safe, second guessing whether the coverage was complete. Instead, a clear eyed field edit let me make an informed decision to pack out, which saved real time and energy at the end of an already long day.

That same evening, reviewing what I had from the summit push helped me recognize which images actually told the honest version of the day, the forgotten helmet, the rescue, the long grind up Heartbreak Hill, rather than only the polished summit shot. Seeing that range clearly, while it was still fresh, made the eventual editing process at home faster and more confident than it would have been working from memory alone weeks later.

What I Would Tell Someone Planning a Similar Trip

If you are heading into a multi day solo project, build small editing windows into your schedule the same way you would build in meals or rest. Do not treat it as optional or as something you will get to eventually. The value of field editing is not the editing itself. It is the information it gives you about what you still need to capture, while you still have the chance to capture it.

Keep the sessions short and focused. You do not need a full workflow in the field, just enough clarity to know whether you are actually getting the story you set out to tell. That discipline, checked daily across seven demanding days, is a big part of why I came home from this trip with a complete set of coverage for three different brand clients instead of a pile of footage full of unknown gaps.

Dalton Johnson is a commercial photographer and director of photography based in South Lake Tahoe, California. Over the last decade he has worked with brands including Patagonia, GoPro, Arc'teryx, Four Seasons, Nike, Rivian, and Big Agnes across all seven continents. He documents adventure, travel, and the outdoors through photography, film, and writing. Follow along at dalton-johnson.com.