How ruthless are you about deleting?

[skywalkerbeth]

Hi everyone

This shouldn't be a hard to do - but for some reason, it is.

If I look at something on the camera and it looks like crap, I can delete and move on. For some stupid reason once I put it on my hard drive I can't delete - I segregate "those to put online" from those I won't put online (whether through redundancy or crappiness) in folders online, and never do I look at the "didn't make the cut" again... but I am loath to delete.

Where do you draw the line on conserving your HD space? I know that there are photos that aren't "artsy/good for public sharing" but might convey a story nonetheless... (even if you'd only show it to family members/travel companions who were there)...

A photo club colleague stated recently that if he doesn't put a photo online, he just deletes it from his hard drive. I.e. he saves maybe 10% of a shoot, the rest is gone, why waste his time. Do you do this?

I guess part of it is that I never know if I will one day look at something and say "hey, that was a good shot after all...", or, "hmmm, there is a story in there I didn't see before". The redundant ones are especially tough because if I took 10 photos of a scene, liked 5 of them, but don't want to bore friends with 5 shots of the same thing I just pick one to show off and the other 4 didn't make the cut even though they are good photos.

[TeeTee]

Hardly delete any. You never know when a client or myself will come back to look at the proofs and pick out a shop to recrop/edit and end up with something you really cherish.

At the price of data storage these days it's not unreasonable to consider this luxury of choice affordable.

[Radtech1]

Never ever delete.

Not because I think I might toss away some hidden gem, but rather because deleting is just one more thing to do. Why bother?

Rad

[jgrussell]

A photo club colleague stated recently that if he doesn't put a photo online, he just deletes it from his hard drive. I.e. he saves maybe 10% of a shoot, the rest is gone, why waste his time. Do you do this?I do my major cuts BEFORE they get to my hard drive. I have card ports on my monitor and so pop the card in, review four shots at a time in Breezebrowser, cull the ones that really aren't worth keeping and only then consider which to process. That may result in another culling of the ones that, when processed, have defects in focus or clarity.

[Javiert92]

I sometimes delete and some no. Like to put it this way, why delete them if the shutter has already been actuated.

[RDKirk]

I'm a little less ruthless with digital than film because some otherwise useless shots can become composite fodder. The group shot that is perfect except for one person's blink is now the one to keep, because the next shot has his eyes open--but is deficient in several other ways. So where I would once have instantly tossed a shot into the wastebasket, now I hold on to it for a while longer until I've made sure it doesn't have some composite use.

[Karl Johnston]

I do the same thing as JGR

[Analog6]

I only delete out of focus or blurry. Storage is cheap, and you never know. Your crappy might be of interest to someone else.

I have some surf ones that are just so-so (pose wise) but the surfers who are the subjects often like them.

[shomat]

I don't conserve hard drive space. I add hard drives when space runs out.

[Grimes]

I went around today and took maybe 200 shots. I'll probably end up deleting all but 50, and then post process less than 10 of them.....

[Brikwall]

I only delete out of focus or blurry.

Same here.

[Bobster]

if it doesnt meet the gade, its gone

[bheard1836]

After a shoot, I upload everything and then delete everything that I do not feel is worthy of my time in PP. The exception is family events or something shot for friends - then I only delete the clear losers so that my wife or whoever can have pick of anything they may like - anyone else surprised at some of the captures that seem poor in composition/detail that the wife or a friend say are "the best"?

[gcogger]

On average I delete about 75% of the shots. I do this when they are still RAW images, to save the PP time. I know from experience that I'll never regret it, and I sometimes even go back and cull more of them. I am strictly an amateur, however.

[monty28428]

I wouldn't have anything left if I deleted all the cr*p photos!

[brian_lewis67]

I used to keep every shot but these days I transfer them from memory card and delete anything that is obvious like out of focus, etc and then while I'm converting them from Raw will decide on deleting another lot and only ones I'm happy spending time converting do I keep.

[HappySnapper90]

When I develop my RAW files is when I do my mass deleting, though I don't shoot much digital these days. I may delete a few after reviewing them in LR. For the most part if I won't make a 4x6 hardcopy print, I don't keep it. Keep the best, ditch the rest!

[mugget]

i delete ruthlessly.

my Dad used to be a bit into photography when he was young, and the thing that he has always said is that a good photographer never shows (or keeps?) bad photos.

i will sort through all my photos and immediately delete any that are blurry or accidentally out of focus, or just badly exposed, not up to scratch etc.

but i make sure that i take enough photos so that i do have some good, or at least okay ones. at the time, if i think that i took a bad one i will just take some more to make up for it, not stopping to delete the bad photo until i get it on my computer (unless i have time to delete from the camera).

this is what you're talking about, right? i just don't see any reason to keep a technically 'bad' photos (blurry, etc.) unless it has some absolutely spectacular content that you were just lucky to capture, but unlucky to take a bad photo of.

[oaktree]

I delete all test shots, all shots where the main subject is way OOF, all accidental shots (e.g., floors, ceilings), all shots where the exposure is way off, all shots where I can see NO good areas to crop, and some of the shots I take in burst that are way worst than the ones I choose to keep.

Deletion takes care of about 5-10% of my shoots. The rest are kept, but are rated from zero to 5 in Lightroom so I don't have to deal with the zero and "1" rated files. The 2-5 rated files probably make up about 1/3 of my shots. These are the only ones I post process and let others see.

[cdifoto]

I'm brutal. If it's not client-worthy it gets deleted forever. No matter how cheap storage is, it's still wasteful to keep stuff that'll never be seen again.

[FZ1]

Depends on the subject matter. If they are personal/family pics, I don't delete anything unless they are bad like OOF, or overly dark, etc (not that those things ever happen to me :o). When I get old and gray(er), the pics that don't seem important to me now may bring back a memory I would have otherwise forgotten. With storage being so cheap, I see no reason to discard them.

For "professional" (quotes because I'm no pro!) pics, I do 3 waves deletions. First is as described above and second is after the recipient of the pics is satisfied with what they are given. At that point any shots not presented to them go bye-bye. The third is a year or so after.

[Addiction2k]

I've taken some pictures with my SLR but nothing I intended to keep yet just some stuff to test my understanding of the tool. I mean its only been 1 day lol.

However with my old point and shoots (Sony F717) I was and remain ruthless about deleting. If I don't like the picture I don't keep it. I have terabytes of space but with 40k music tracks, 2k movies and 12k pictures it fills up fast so I just cut out what isn't worth viewing and keep what is.

However to be fair my standards for pictures have been way worse than most of you guys. I keep pictures many of you would consider to be drek. However once I actually learn to use my SLR and can shoot an occasional decent picture I won't be keeping the drek anymore.