keeping every photo

[mknabster]

I have had this question for awhile, but i have now decided to ask it. I know there's no limit to how many pictures i can take w/ a digital, especially now that i have a 60 GB portable media organizer, but should i keep every single picture i take, not including the blurry ones? So far, i have backed up every single one i have to CDs, and my computer holds them too, and now i'm putting some on my media organizer. I know if i have a business later in m life i would have to keep every single thing, but now in my life, at 17, should i bother? I'm starting to learn sports-wise, taking pictures for the school newspaper, my eidtor only wants 20 - 30 of the best, but i do still keep the others. Should i keep doing this, or delte the ones i don't give in?

[In2Photos]

If the shots you take are going to be something that you will look at often then keep them on your HDD. Otherwise for shots like the sports ones, just save the originals to disk along with any edits you want, clearly mark it and file appropriately, then delete them from your HDD.

I keep every photo right now but I only have about 30GB worth. Things might change down the road.

[staciecd]

I tend to keep all of my photos that are half way decent - closed eyes, overly blurred, or too dark get deleted. Every few months, I go back and delete some and use the bad ones as lessons learned and to judge how far I have come.

Stacie

[Double Negative]

I tend to keep all of my photos that are half way decent - closed eyes, overly blurred, or too dark get deleted.
Same here... No different than deleting in-camera. If they suck, they get trashed. If they can't be pulled back from the dead via RAW... C'ya. No point in keeping them.

[saravrose]

I rountinely go through my photos and organize them into appropriate files and delete everything not worth keeping.. however, it's been awhile since i've organized anything and i'm starting to feel a little lazy... I do have c.d. back-ups of anything really important...

sari

[liza]

No way do I keep everything. During basketball season, for example, I shoot around 200 images per game and sometimes attend as many as 3 games per week. I only keep the best and delete the rest.

[ArcticEOS]

No way do I keep everything. During basketball season, for example, I shoot around 200 images per game and sometimes attend as many as 3 games per week. I only keep the best and delete the rest.

Same here.

[Longwatcher]

I keep 99.99% of everything I take. That .01% are the ones where I was showing off the cameras speed in small jpeg mode. Those I don't keep.
Otherwise I keep everything.
I am on my 4th pack of 50 DVD+Rs. Thinks about it...

[Lax_lacks]

I keep, too, keep 99.9% of everything I take. The ones deleted are total crap shots (too blurry, black, etc).

[primoz]

Whoa hold your horses :) "I know if i have a business later in m life i would have to keep every single thing" is completely wrong. If I would do this (and I still shoot little compared to bunch of friends I usually work with) disk manufacturers would be really happy to have me as client :) All photos which are crappy (out of focus, not exposed at least kinda right, which have cutted legs, arms, heads etc.) get deleted.
With sport I almost always shoot on high speed which means bunch of almost same photos. From same sequence I usually keep 1 or 2 best one, while everything else gets deleted. So basically in good days I come from about 400-600 photos shoot at event, down to about 200 photos which I save... Number of keepers depends, but that's about average. From noname athletes I usually keep photo or two (you never know when you need them), and from more famous one a bit more, but that's it.
When you shoot more, there's one more thing which you learn next to getting better and getting more comfortable with unknown situations. And that's art of knowing what to keep and what to delete. You just can't keep everything you shoot.

[Sean-Mcr]

I don't keep all my shots, i think when people go on about having a huge amount of keepers, well they're often the only people who'd keep them. I'm pretty hard on myself, but not actually has hard as i should be, but harder then many all the same

[lmelendez]

I tend to keep all of my photos that are half way decent - closed eyes, overly blurred, or too dark get deleted. Every few months, I go back and delete some and use the bad ones as lessons learned and to judge how far I have come.

Stacie

Same thing here!

[DwightMcCann]

Well, I have a few photographs (about 170,000) and I tend to agree with Primoz ... mine are for business but I only keep less than half. But to complicate things, I no longer back up to CDs. CDs go bad (I am told.) And it is hard to tell what is on them unless you print contents on the labels (I tried doing it with a Sharpie but couldn't get it all on some of the CDs.) So, now I have a 160 GB primary disk pool (Raid 1 for those that know about this sort of thing.) Every week or so I copy the newer stuff to my first level backup which is a 500+ GB RAID 5 storage pool. When the primary area starts to fill I delete the oldest stuff from it. Then I have another machine on which I have a 750+ GB RAID 5 storage pool and about once a month I copy everything new on the first level backup pool to this machine. So, I have well over a TB of disk space available for image storage and have at least two copies of every image that I am keeping in storage pools that can withstand having a disk go bad. And I have room to add a few more disks to these pools. Nope, don't keep everything but be sure you don't lose what you really want! :-)

[OdiN1701]

I keep everything.

Everything is backed up onto DVD's for archive.

Dwight - CD's can go bad, but it's very rare. Just keep them stored in a cool dry place and you'll be fine. They should outlast you :)

[DwightMcCann]

Dwight - CD's can go bad, but it's very rare. Just keep them stored in a cool dry place and you'll be fine. They should outlast you :)

At this point almost anything will outlast me!

[OdiN1701]

At this point almost anything will outlast me!

lol. Well I have seen those CD's that get that fungal infection that eats the surface of the media off....but it's very rare and seems to be more likely in humid areas.

[lakiluno]

I delete all the obviously bad ones in raw shooters, fix up the under/over exposed ones, and if I can't do that, then I delete them in RS as well, and then using an image browsing program I delete the ones that are bad for slightly less obvious reasons.


on the CD note, I had some very cheap no-label CD-R's last less than 2 years. They had something burnt on them from some time in 2004, and half of them where un-usable a few months ago, with 2 others in a very bad condition readability-wise.

So cheap CD's aren't worth it :D

Leo

[Steve Parr]

I'm now at the point now where I keep just about everything. Unless a picture is completely and utterly horrible, it gets burned to CD.

I took this shot at House Of Blues a couple of weeks ago"

http://onstagephotography.com/images/hugebwnet.jpg

The color version was ridiculously bad. This guitarist gets airborne on occasion, and I wanted to catch it. Well, I caught it, but the shot was crap. I had just about made the decision to delete it when I started playing around with, finally desaturating it.

The guitarist loves the shot. He's got a print of it hanging up at his desk, has the shot on his website, and alos uses it as an avatar.

I dunno'. I wouldn't have thought it was much to look at, but I'm glad I kept it...

[AdamJL]

I've only got about 30GB worth of photos as well, but I keep everything that I don't delete on the camera.
Everything is backed up on an external HDD, and DVD copies are sent to my family overseas incase something happens to my PC and external HDD.

I don't mind looking at the bad shots, it just makes me want to take better pictures.

[saravrose]

hey Steve, don't tell Dwight but I like that shot.. flaws and all...

sari

[Choderboy]

Not so relevant for the majority of us , maybe , but I saw / read something recently pointing out how there will be a lot of usefull photos discarded since the advent of digital. (maybe wanted more accurate than usefull) Several photographers said they were deleting unwanted pics and just keeping the nedded ones.

Example given was the Bill Clinton impeachment - apparently there were many photos taken that featured that Monica person , but who could have guessed how "wanted" those photos would become.
As these were film , photographers were able to go back through their stock and look for photos with her in it. (and a few other key people)

I recently took quite a few photos of a small green and yellow bird. Had a hard time trying to ID it. Went through my originals (as opposed to the "keeper" folder) and found the answer - very distinctive patch on the rump of a bird in flight provided the answer - Red Rumped Parrot. Photo was poor, but provided a definite ID.

[Steve Parr]

hey Steve, don't tell Dwight but I like that shot.. flaws and all...

sari

Hehehe... Thanks!

[Saralonde]

I get rid of the bad shots, but I keep everything of my granddaughter, bad or not!:lol:

[Art Rodriguez]

I keep about 99% of all my photos. But then I keep a lot of things. You shoud see my junk drawer:oops:

Art