To keep or not to keep !

doozie

doozie

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I was just wondering what all you guys do with your photos, what constitutes a "keeper" and do you find that your hard-drive is getting clogged up with images that are borderline keepers(like mine).

If it is borderline, then is it a non-keeper ?

I've been looking through my HDD and I've started to wonder what I'm going to do with all the images on there. Some(a small percentage) have had the grand honour of becoming prints but, there are loads that I just dont know what to do with. Is it just me?

I heard (somewhere) an interview with Sheila Hancock(widow of John Thaw) She is/was a very keen photographer but said she had given it up because all she did was put the pics in a box, then she needed a bigger box then a bigger one. She ended up with a collection of images that.....well.....just sat there doing nothing. I think in the end she just thought, Whats the point !

Is it the end result that keeps you going, or the journey to the end result ?

Does it matter if you dont get any keepers, as long as you have been on the journey ?
 
I'm not too bothered if I don't get keepers, I just love going out and taking photos.
 
You take your images because you get some sort of pleasure and satisfaction from them, I don't think you need to look any further for a reason.

With regard to keepers, I think you need to be ruthless - if it's not a keeper when you first look at it, it isn't going to look any better in 6 months time when you look at it again. Learn to be merciless in deleting the rubbish and the 'not quite there' images, even when it hurts a bit. Apart from raising your standards, it cuts down on a lot of hard drive real estate. ;)
 
i just have a clearout every so often.
if i havent used em, or at least think theyre potentialY good enough to use.
BIN.
ive done a few band alldayers recently , and i get a bit carried away.
nearly 1000 shots on the last one.i'll go though em in a while, and probably bin 75% of em, as i'm not likely to use em.
if the angle isnt spot on, or the focus isnt spot on.BIN.
if its a random one of somebody, and not realy interesting . BIN.
 
CT said:
With regard to keepers, I think you need to be ruthless - if it's not a keeper when you first look at it, it isn't going to look any better in 6 months time when you look at it again.
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I'm afraid to be that ruthless because I sometimes go back to images that wouldn't have necessarily made it into my keep pile. For example, when I learn new processing techniques.

I guess being a hoarder doesn't help! :lol:
 
I have far far too many rubbish photo's on my external drive.
Unfortunately a lot of them hold a sentimental value so they stay, they're not for sharing but I like to see them every so often.
I really should be more ruthless.
 
MattF said:
I'm not too bothered if I don't get keepers, I just love going out and taking photos.
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You and me both (which is probably just as well going by the number of keepers I get). Occasionally, just very occasionally I get one that makes the hackles on the back of my neck raise and that makes it all even more worth while.
 
As you approach the later years in life you'll start to wish you had taken/kept more photos. The silly things like your schools, school friends, your bedroom and other house shots. All the crap pictures that are readily discarded over the years will acquire a new value as you get older. They may have no artistic merit, but one day you'll realise you have great chunks of your life missing from your photo collection.

That's not to say that you must keep everything. I discard technical failures, obviously, and multiple shots that are almost identical. I do seem to keep what other people would describe as 'pointless' pictures. My US road trips show not only the nice scenery, but the less interesting stuff. They show the route that I took including the boring stuff in between the good bits. I take pictures of hotels/motels that I've stayed in, including the rooms and the views from the window.

Then there's the sad stuff. I've taken random shots at things like weddings and other gatherings, again no artistic or technical merit, only to have somebody say weeks or months later that so-and-so has died, have you got any pictures of him? My friend's beloved dog died recently. His grief was compounded by the fact that all his digital photos had disappeared off his PC due to a recent hard drive failure (no backup) and he had nothing but a ten year old faded print. Over the years I had taken snapshots of the dog with my pocket camera. Nothing special. No competition (or even TP calendar) winners. Apart from a handful out of 200 or so I could have deleted them all. But every one of them has brought immeasurable joy to my friend.

There's more to our hobby than hoping and trying to take the sort of pictures to make people oooh and aaah. With the every decreasing cost of hard drive space, having too many pictures is the least of my worries.
 
Ive been going back through my hard drive recently, the way I decided to do it was to delete all but the best photo of something. So - loads of pics of a certain bike at BSB? Keep the best, bin the others till I have one of each bike/ corner/ rider. Loads of pics of Lions? Bin all except the best. Only exception is if the Lion ends up doing multiple things - eating or sleeping. Then I keep the best ones of it doing each activity.

Works for me, although I do keep extra if its a holiday or something like that.

Chris
 
MisterE said:
As you approach the later years in life you'll start to wish you had taken/kept more photos. The silly things like your schools, school friends, your bedroom and other house shots. All the crap pictures that are readily discarded over the years will acquire a new value as you get older. They may have no artistic merit, but one day you'll realise you have great chunks of your life missing from your photo collection.

That's not to say that you must keep everything. I discard technical failures, obviously, and multiple shots that are almost identical. I do seem to keep what other people would describe as 'pointless' pictures. My US road trips show not only the nice scenery, but the less interesting stuff. They show the route that I took including the boring stuff in between the good bits. I take pictures of hotels/motels that I've stayed in, including the rooms and the views from the window.

Then there's the sad stuff. I've taken random shots at things like weddings and other gatherings, again no artistic or technical merit, only to have somebody say weeks or months later that so-and-so has died, have you got any pictures of him? My friend's beloved dog died recently. His grief was compounded by the fact that all his digital photos had disappeared off his PC due to a recent hard drive failure (no backup) and he had nothing but a ten year old faded print. Over the years I had taken snapshots of the dog with my pocket camera. Nothing special. No competition (or even TP calendar) winners. Apart from a handful out of 200 or so I could have deleted them all. But every one of them has brought immeasurable joy to my friend.

There's more to our hobby than hoping and trying to take the sort of pictures to make people oooh and aaah. With the every decreasing cost of hard drive space, having too many pictures is the least of my worries.
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Well said Bro. :thumbs:
 
i still have all of the RAWS from what i have taken when out and about, dont have time to sit throught them so will keep them all for now lol
 
cyclone said:
I have far far too many rubbish photo's on my external drive.
Unfortunately a lot of them hold a sentimental value so they stay, they're not for sharing but I like to see them every so often.
I really should be more ruthless.
Click to expand...

Same for me ...

Its not easy to clear stuff, I do occasionally go through and trim more and more, but so much of it is just a documentary to my life in one way or an other that mundane or not, its gonna stay.
 
I think MisterE has summed it all up quite nicely for me. If it's a borderline shot without any possible emotional attachment then I'd be more likely to housekeep it than if it were a borderline shot of a friend or family member.

Besides, dodgy photos of friends and family are always useful for embarrassing them at a later e.g. on their wedding day :lol:
 
Every shot I import to Lightroom is copied onto an external drive so I always have a copy. After a shoot I get rid of all the OOF/repeats etc and mark every photo I've used. Then a few times a year I go through and delete all the photos I've not used and see no reason to keep. I've leart to be pretty ruthless the first time I did it I more than halved the number of shots in my Lightroom catalog.
 
Given the continuing decrease in price (and increase in capacity) of storage, is there any real need to discard anything?
I can see Sheila Hancocks point about physical prints, you'd need to keep moving house every few years to house the things, but it's not really an issue with digital?
Of course this then brings the problem of actually finding a particular image amongst the thousands......
 
My standard routine is this:

Download RAW's from CF Card.
View in Adobe Bridge and immediately delete the obvious rubbish.
View the remaining shots again and filter out near duplicates etc.
Then label the definate keepers and leave the rest alone for now.
Once I've processed the definate keepers I look back through the remaining shots that I was undecided about and possibly pull out one or two more.
Bin the rest.

TBH, if I'm shooting wildlife it's not unusual for me to end up with 5-10 keepers from 200 shots ;)
 
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