Looking at selects after a shoot is a lot like going to see a comedian at a comedy club. 

When you go to a comedy club, the comedian is hilarious! You have a great time and so do the people you go with. He’s so good that you remember him a few days later. You decide to search for him and see his best material online. You show your friends while you watch and then, for some reason, you realize it wasn’t as funny as you remembered when you were there. 

Similarly, when you’re shooting, everything is going amazing and you look at the back of your camera as you go along. “That’s the one! That’s the money shot!” you scream. Everyone is loving it and you feel like you got some amazing shots. The team gets excited and it almost turns into a party. 

You go home and a couple of days later you go back to those shots and you think to yourself, “they aren’t as good as I remembered?” 

So what’s missing? Half of it’s the psychology of the environment influencing you to like the shots more than you wanted. 

Similarly to the comedian you see online later, the atmosphere is completely different now and the humor isn’t influenced by anything other than the comedian. Take away the drinks, your friends, the laughing fat guy in the corner that makes it funnier - when it’s just you and the material, it all changes. 

It’s amazing how psychology and environment affects how much you actually like the same thing and how it changes based on what conditions you see it under.