Question keep or ditch?

Eatthemtrifles

Eatthemtrifles

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Edit My Images
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As a beginner I must have hundreds of images, a few I like, most are not great ( and a few really bad ones) my question is do I keep them all? Do I delete the bad ones and file the rest away ( until I master lightroom, which might be a few years the way I'm going !) Can a bad photo really end up being a good photo ( with pp)? and is it worth all the hassle? ( with that I mean why not try to get the image right in the first place? Have I just answered my own question?:D
 
When I first started out, I remember being told to keep everything!
So I did...well everything except the totally black under exposed & white over exposed ones.

I'd say, if you can buy a cheap 1tb hard drive & store them on there, wait a few months & review.

Some of my favourite personal images are ones that break all the rules of photography.
 
I tend not to delete anything, but use LR's flagging (pick) feature to identify keepers following a rating session where I have a slightly arbitrary scoring system. A nice shot gets a 4 star rating, an exceptional one a 5*, a nice or exceptional shot that is in effect duplicated or similar or great but not the pick! gets a 3*, or no pick flag and 4*, a technically ok, but meh shot gets a two, and obvious technical issues (oof, camera shake, awkward crop that ruins the image) gets a 1*

Storage is cheap, so I tend not to delete though often do the 1* as I go. However, it's trivial for me to at some stage filter on 1* and delete them all. Everything else would stay. I've often found shots that I've come back to that I'd underestimated, or for some reason (eg a tiny bit of photoshop) can be made great and I had no other 4 or 5 star shots of that image in the set. One of these days I might get more ruthless with my garbage. But I am extremely ruthless when I select my very best images. Generally no more than 1, exceptionally 2 of a similar shot allowed.
 
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Depends what the subject of the shot is, as sometimes a dodgy photo is better than none at all. I agree that the price of storage is now so cheap that a dump file for the also-rans is easily affordable. I'd weed out the ones that are clearly out of focus or otherwise blurry and ones that are grossly under or over exposed and can't be recovered, but it can be surprising what you might like if you revisit the dump file on a rainy day and many compositions can be rehashed or reprocessed. ;)
 
The other factor to consider - I shoot in RAW. I've got shots that I've revisited that were too noisy for my taste years ago, that with the evolution in RAW conversion have since become usable. Another factor as said above - dodgy photo sometimes better than none at all. With image processing improvements, even camera shakes and motion blur can be corrected. That said, some of the c**p that I keep is never going to turned into a prizewinning shot :) But they are memories too, and recently my Son put together an album of shots taken over the years of family, for my 50th birthday. Many of which were mine, shots I'd had processed in the film days, and shoved back into the envelope because for various reasons I'd not liked them at the time, hadn't met my own OCD for image quality or some I'd just forgotten about. But 20 and 30 years on, those shots reduced me to a blubbing wreck (I'm only slightly ashamed to say). So while as photographers we are (overly) picky about our images, as memories, that one blurry oof shot of young family, is the perfect image 20 years on. That's another reason I don't delete.
 
sometimes it's worth keeping just so you can see your progress. Looking back at shots you took 5 years ago could show you have far you have come. Also for mags/books sometimes having those old bad shots are great reference material. Do you need them all? Thats for you to decide ;)
 
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