After the two post on sorting photos and how many in a month... does anyone delete their photos. I allow myself to keep 1 MAYBE 2 photos from a outing and I go back every few months an cull that back unless it is for someone else, than I burn an archival CD and leave it at that... What do the rest of you do?
I'm not sure yet. Since I started the project I'm taking loads more bad photos. I go through and delete the really bad exposure, out of focus and keep the decent ones. I'm still learning how to use my camera effectively, so I hope the number of bad shots decreases! I have a 500 GB hard drive on my laptop and I wonder if I should offload old shots to a backup hard drive, but burning a cd sounds a little safer. Then it boils down to having the time to go through and delete and archive......
I usually just delete shots that, for one reason or another, didn't come out. Eventually I'll start running up against space issues and I had been considering buying an external hard drive, but burning to disc sounds more economical--and safer.
oh I delete loads and loads. Then I delete some more. A few extra shots from some special outings or events will be saved to share with family, but for the most part, I'm deleting like crazy so I don't wind up with a gazillion pictures on my pc.
I try to delete most of my photo's. I don't see any reason to keep them unless I know what I was trying to accomplish and want to figure out what went wrong, by looking at the camera settings, focus, angle, etc. Even then I don't keep it for long. I feel that it is important to keep a critical and (as much as possible) impartial eye when viewing your own photos. That way you grow as a photographer and as an editor.
Ansel Adams had something like 44,000 negatives, of those only about 2,500 ever got printed and only about 10-20 ever became truly well known and "famous"
If he can self edit and "delete" , so can I
I am not trying to sound self important, only stating that if one of the best photographers can do it, I should be able to also.
I have separate folders: 365 pictures, runner ups, others, and a transition folder when they're in editing and I'm choosing one for the day. I try to delete when I have a bunch of pictures of the same subject/
Major deleter. I once found myself with a TON of photos, most of which were crud. The thought of going through all of them at once was overwhelming. I finally got to it when I was on sabbatical for a year. Now I stay on top of it, and know I like the ones I wound up keeping.
I only delete photos that are out of focus, under or overexposed, or contains to useful composition (such as accidentally shooting my foot, which I do from time to time).
Otherwise, I keep everything. However, I learned photography on film, so I'm a frugal shooter. I keep, use, and sell about 50% of the photos I take.
I haven't ever deleted any photos, which is why my 1 terabyte hard drive is over half full. I used to keep them in two places but now I just don't have room for that. I am planning on getting another external hard drive so that I can back them all up. Yes, I am a photo hoarder!
I don't delete enough.... I can't help to think "Yes I prefer this one, but this one has a different angle / light / composition / "insert anything can be different from pic to pic here". But since I started this project I'm trying to work on that...
I have a super incredibly amazing geeky husband who got a very large external drive that I dump photos on so I don't have to delete as many as I probably should. Heh.
I delete mainly the ones that are a hot mess (out of focus, bad composition, lighting, etc).
A reminder to the CD folks... CD's have a shelf life... and depending on the quality of the disk, could range from 2 years to 10 years or longer. It might be wise every couple of years to make a new copy of your CD's or to have a back-up on a extrenal drive.
like some of the posters, i keep everything. they may look flat now but in a few days or months and i look at them, i more or less will make use of the ugly photos, maybe i learn a new technique in PS and then turn that into a real abstract work or maybe use it as a background for another picture or collage, you get the idea.
plus it feels really bad when you know that you took a specific picture and then later realize that you deleted it long ago because you didn't think it deserved some hard drive space. happened to me more than once. :)
@jasonbarnette i shot the foot of another runner in a fun run once, accidentally. upon experimenting, it turned out great once i fixed the angle. it became the cover a photo album about that run, chosen by the organizers. :) maybe that was luck lol
I hate deleting too... but I also hate having so much "clutter" so I do try to get rid of the terrible ones, or only keep only the best one from a series where they're all essentially the same photo. I have a ton of mediocre ones that probably should go, but I don't have the heart to get rid of, LOL.
Aperture takes like 20 minutes to load and I'm only two months in, argh! I'm still getting used to the Mac. (anyone know if there's a way to store them somewhere else, besides IN Aperture?)
@polarvrtx I experimented with Aperture for three months and Lightroom for six months, and they are both horrible programs. The problem with these programs is that they create catalogs of all your images, and these digital files have to be re-written every single time you add, change, or move a photo. It got to the point that it was taking Lightroom 15 minutes to load on my Macbook Pro.
So, I got Photo Mechanic. No catalogs. No files to rewrite every time. You simply create a folder on your Mac, put the photos there, and then Photo Mechanic finds them automatically for you.
I do a couple rounds of deleting, the first on my camera, I'll dump anything that I know isn't good, then when i load them on the computer I'll go through again & dump anything I missed that is blurry, or a repeat shot that wasn't the best, that kind of thing. Unless it's a memory I want to keep, then I keep the bad ones too, lol. still need to work out long term storage.
I delete as I go... anything that is of no use, out of focus or a double up all before I edit .. Once I've edited what I have left I keep.
Any clients I have all their photos are stored onto an external as well as a disc so that if they ever loose theirs or want things printed they are easily accessible
I delete ones that aren't in focused, but keep the majority. I may not know what use they have right now, but when you have a project, they are so useful.
Organization is key. 10k photos of a trip, for example, can get overwhelming. I tag each photo with keywords. Names of people, places, things, etc. Then I can search for my name and say ocean for pictures of me and the ocean.
Since I've started 365 my computer has been running slower because I'm using up all the memory with my bad shots. I haven't had the time to delete them. I just edit the one I want to post. I should keep them on my memory disk but I'm not sure how to do that and avoid re-uploading old photos to my computer each time. So I just delete them from my memory disk after I upload them. Not the best thing for my comp.
I shoot a lot, delete some, but need to delete a lot more. Deleting the bad 365 shots isn't difficult. My weakness is deleting so-so family photos. Part of me knows it's clutter. The other part of me knows that storage is pretty cheap compared to even a few years ago. I also know that software is continuously getting better, so down the road, some shots can be salvaged. I've already seen this with some noisy pictures that (5 years ago) were unusable. Now they actually look really good in the latest versions of Adobe Camera Raw. I would prefer to be cleaner, but have a ways to go.
@bethanyjay get a bottle of wine... tether the labtop to the 50"... crank some tunes.... and goto town! Three pile... Garbage, maybe/ok, and great! the mix should likely be 5%/93%/2%.... delete the Garbage... finish the wine and delete the maybe/ok pile and you will be left with the photos that matter in your life...
I used to have a bit of a panic attack when it came to having to delete photos, short of breath, raised heart rate, nauseous etc. I would back up to 2 hard drives and delete when my computer had spacial issues. that would happen about every year.
Now it happens every 6 weeks at least and i have over come my anxiety when deleting photos.
Im needing to do another massive back up and delete now, i just need the time
I also keep most of my shots, I delete the out of focus and obvious no shot....The rest - even if they are just ok, get sorted into date folders and kept. As someone else said earlier, you never know when you could use a portion of the image :D
I delete as I go, and then later, maybe a couple of years later, I go back through. I just started doing this, and may also start archiving on cds and dvds. I do sometimes resize smaller, to save space.
I delete anything I don't like, or anything that is just a slightly inferior version of another shot taken in the same sequence. I still have backups saved of everything just in case. When I'm done editing, I make a further backup of the edits plus the originals. I used to burn to DVD, but I odn't tend to do that now as I have one set on my computer, one set on an external drive, and one on my DROBO with dual-drive redundancy.
So, the ones I cull at the start, I only have one copy saved. I don't bother to go back and delete from the orginal save so I still have every photo ever taken (in RAW format), but I don't back those up - when they corrupt or the disk fails, they're gone forever.
I just started the 365 Project this month, so I don't have too many pics cluttering up my computer just yet! What I do is take all the photos off my card each day and put them in a folder, where I then give them all names. Then I delete the ones that I really don't like, the bad shots. From what remains, I choose my daily favorite and add "FAVORITE" to the end of its name. I like naming my photos because if I'm looking for photos of, say, trees, I can just look under T. I can also choose to arrange them by date if needed.
From the volume of photos I already have, though, I can tell that I'll need to invest in some external storage VERY soon. Each of my photos is about 2.5MB, so I guess I'll do a little math at the end of the month and determine how much storage I'll need for the year.
This thread actually got me reviewing my pictures and deleting ones I don't need/want, but I do keep the ones that have potential, even if they're not the greatest photos I've ever taken. I do currently have mine backed up, but with the way I take pictures, and how large they are, I may need more space and soon. :-)
That's my advice: Delete the ones you have no interest in, keep the ones that could work. You can always go back in a few months and see how you feel about the "ok" ones. If you have additional storage...use it!
I am quite brutal because I figure there will always be another shot. Although I agree completely with @paulcleveland in that "so so" family pictures... well they do sometimes escape the delete button *shrugs*!
I look really close after a shoot mark the ones that are great and delete everything else, if not you will be covered up I have well over a terabyte of pics archived.
@icywarm I don't delete photos unless I don't actually want them. If I remotely think I might use it in the future it is saved in it's folder by day/month/year on my computer.
I keep an outtake file on my facebook for my friends to see my other takes. If there are ones I take that I really love I put them in my spares album I made on here. Otherwise, I delete them, I'll not have use for them again so *shrugs* why keep 'em.
I'm deleting some photo directly from the camera, when I see it's fuzzy, out of focus or I just don't like how did it turned out.
Then when I upload them in my computer, I'm erasing as much photos as I can. Dont want to be surrounded by photos that I dont like, just because one day, i could change my mind.
I was running up against low disk space when I started 365 this year so I'm deleting as I go. Like Paul, I have more problems deleting the family photos @paulcleveland although I'm getting better at that. I need to get a system for storing the ones I want to keep just haven't really found one that works for me yet.
I'm wondering if there will be a point where I'll think I should have deleted all of these newbie photos I'm taking!
I absolutely delete. On one 3 week trip we took about 6000 photos. We didn't have a decent laptop at the time so I spent hours sorting / deleting after we got home. We now delete as we upload; quick and efficient and an excellent habit to indulge. :o]
I sort and delete when I load them on my computer for each shoot. Done daily now. I also have an external hard drive, as I take a lot of photos. If your computer crashes like my sisters did with no backup of all her family photos, they are lost forever. She paid some exorbitant amount of money to try and salvage them. They only recovered a few sadly :( Get an external hard drive for sure!!!
I definitely delete.
I bought my first digital camera in spring 2004 and I've been shooting almost daily since then. If I had kept everything I would have had 100.000 pics by now, which is ridiculous. I delete everything that is badly exposed, out of focus or poorly composed (an exception are shots of my children, I've kept some out of focus shots of them that are particularly lovely).
I want my photo collection to be managable. I file everything religiously by year/month/day and also multitag all my photos.
Write a Reply
Sign up for a free account or Sign in to post a comment.
Tweets ahoy!
Join the Group
Pin With Me
Ansel Adams had something like 44,000 negatives, of those only about 2,500 ever got printed and only about 10-20 ever became truly well known and "famous"
If he can self edit and "delete" , so can I
I am not trying to sound self important, only stating that if one of the best photographers can do it, I should be able to also.
Otherwise, I keep everything. However, I learned photography on film, so I'm a frugal shooter. I keep, use, and sell about 50% of the photos I take.
A reminder to the CD folks... CD's have a shelf life... and depending on the quality of the disk, could range from 2 years to 10 years or longer. It might be wise every couple of years to make a new copy of your CD's or to have a back-up on a extrenal drive.
plus it feels really bad when you know that you took a specific picture and then later realize that you deleted it long ago because you didn't think it deserved some hard drive space. happened to me more than once. :)
Aperture takes like 20 minutes to load and I'm only two months in, argh! I'm still getting used to the Mac. (anyone know if there's a way to store them somewhere else, besides IN Aperture?)
So, I got Photo Mechanic. No catalogs. No files to rewrite every time. You simply create a folder on your Mac, put the photos there, and then Photo Mechanic finds them automatically for you.
That's true... when it's a memory photos I tend to keep most of them unless they are unrecognizable or duplicates.
Any clients I have all their photos are stored onto an external as well as a disc so that if they ever loose theirs or want things printed they are easily accessible
Organization is key. 10k photos of a trip, for example, can get overwhelming. I tag each photo with keywords. Names of people, places, things, etc. Then I can search for my name and say ocean for pictures of me and the ocean.
Now it happens every 6 weeks at least and i have over come my anxiety when deleting photos.
Im needing to do another massive back up and delete now, i just need the time
So, the ones I cull at the start, I only have one copy saved. I don't bother to go back and delete from the orginal save so I still have every photo ever taken (in RAW format), but I don't back those up - when they corrupt or the disk fails, they're gone forever.
Before I import I will delete out of focus photos immediately or ones that the detail is not saveable
On 365 I have deleted a colour photo and replaced it with a black and white which seemed a bit better.
From the volume of photos I already have, though, I can tell that I'll need to invest in some external storage VERY soon. Each of my photos is about 2.5MB, so I guess I'll do a little math at the end of the month and determine how much storage I'll need for the year.
That's my advice: Delete the ones you have no interest in, keep the ones that could work. You can always go back in a few months and see how you feel about the "ok" ones. If you have additional storage...use it!
Then when I upload them in my computer, I'm erasing as much photos as I can. Dont want to be surrounded by photos that I dont like, just because one day, i could change my mind.
I'm wondering if there will be a point where I'll think I should have deleted all of these newbie photos I'm taking!
I bought my first digital camera in spring 2004 and I've been shooting almost daily since then. If I had kept everything I would have had 100.000 pics by now, which is ridiculous. I delete everything that is badly exposed, out of focus or poorly composed (an exception are shots of my children, I've kept some out of focus shots of them that are particularly lovely).
I want my photo collection to be managable. I file everything religiously by year/month/day and also multitag all my photos.