What is your definition of a "keeper"

[philwillmedia]

This question is a result of something that came up in another thread
I'm wondering what each person defines as a keeper and what percentage of your shots you expect as keepers.
I don't see a right or wrong answer and expect there to be many and varied views.

I define a keeper as something that I could sell if required and I'd expect that figure to be about 75-80% of what I shoot. Sometimes I'd like it as high as 90%.

If I've clipped the front or back of a car rather than deleting it, a creative crop can still save an image to something useable as per this image below

original - front corner clipped
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=414542&d=1261205041

saved image with creative crop
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=414543&d=1261205041

Obviously I don't sell them all.
If I've shot a sequence of 10, although I might only select 2 or 3, I'd realistically expect 7 or 8 of them to be of marketable or saleable pics.
That is, I could submit them to a mag or paper if required.
As I shoot for more than one mag, I don't send the identical image to each one, but I may send shots from the same sequence that are similar to different publications.

I hope that makes sense.

Where do you sit.

[chauncey]

Are you telling us that you sell 75-80% of the images on your website?

[DStanic]

Depends what I'm shooting..

If it's people:

Exposed properly (that I can recover in RAW anyways)
in focus, no camera shake or motion blur (unless they are dancing perhaps)
Their eyes much be open (unless that was the purpose of the shot)
No silly faces or anything unflattering
Must have potential to be cropped for some sort of use (same idea as the OP stated)

In LR I sort by picks (ones that really stand out.. definatly keepers), unflagged (might use them.. meet the "keeper criteria"), and rejected (which get deleted right after). Then I might sort through the unflagged after i get an idea of how many pics I have to work with, and reject more of those.

Depending how long the shoot was and how many pics I feel I should give, I really can't give a number or % of the "keepers" I would give to the client.

[birdfromboat]

my first culling is very heavy handed, but I don't delete them, just demote them for a concellation round I do later. Basically, I look at a shot just long enough to decide if I want to look at it for more than a millisecond. As soon as my mind says "hey, look at that", I promote it to a higher level, if it's not instantaneous, it goes in the soup. I am really really fast the first time through, maybe 50-75 shots per minut (never timed it, but it is fast). I was taught that you have a millisecond to capture a viewer, mere seconds to show them something, and the near impossible goal of showing them something they want to look at any longer than the time it takes to digest it once and move on. If I can't hook myself in a millisecond, I don't think the image has a chance and in reality, very few get pulled back out of the soup.

[tracknut]

#1 I keep anything I may sell. If I get a whole sequence of great images of the same dog running along, I'll toss all but the best 2-3.

#2 I'll also keep anything I particularly like even though it probably wouldn't sell. Unfortunately sometimes there will be an OOF photo that happens to be significant otherwise, in some sort of photojournalistic way maybe, that I find very hard to put in the trash.

#3 I tend to be far more lenient on keepers when they're personal as opposed to business.

About 50% of my shots go in the trash.

Dave

[RDKirk]

Are you telling us that you sell 75-80% of the images on your website?

He said:
I define a keeper as something that I could sell if required and I'd expect that figure to be about 75-80% of what I shoot.

In other words, 75-80% he considers technically and artistically salable...even if it does not sell.

[RDKirk]

my first culling is very heavy handed, but I don't delete them, just demote them for a concellation round I do later. Basically, I look at a shot just long enough to decide if I want to look at it for more than a millisecond. As soon as my mind says "hey, look at that", I promote it to a higher level, if it's not instantaneous, it goes in the soup. I am really really fast the first time through, maybe 50-75 shots per minut (never timed it, but it is fast). I was taught that you have a millisecond to capture a viewer, mere seconds to show them something, and the near impossible goal of showing them something they want to look at any longer than the time it takes to digest it once and move on. If I can't hook myself in a millisecond, I don't think the image has a chance and in reality, very few get pulled back out of the soup.

Pretty much my philosophy and technique except that in this digital age, an image may hang around for a while longer in case it has composite potential.

That shot of the subject with her eyes closed would have gone into the round file if it had been on film, but it may also turn out to be the image with the best pose of her hands...so I may keep it a bit longer for that reason.

[oaktree]

I think "keepers" is outdated.

If I defined my photos, I would use: store = those stored in Lightroom; flag = those flagged for further consideration/PP; show = those I will show to others.

I have 20,000 stored photos; about 4000 flagged; and a smaller amount (1000-2000??) for show.

[bkburns]

I think "keepers" is outdated.

If I defined my photos, I would use: store = those stored in Lightroom; flag = those flagged for further consideration/PP; show = those I will show to others.

I have 20,000 stored photos; about 4000 flagged; and a smaller amount (1000-2000??) for show.

I have to disagree about the term being outdated. A keeper is anything not discarded. Are you saying you keep 100% of your captures?

[RDKirk]

I think "keepers" is outdated.

If I defined my photos, I would use: store = those stored in Lightroom; flag = those flagged for further consideration/PP; show = those I will show to others.

I have 20,000 stored photos; about 4000 flagged; and a smaller amount (1000-2000??) for show.

Why would you store images that you don't even intend to consider further?

[oaktree]

I have to disagree about the term being outdated. A keeper is anything not discarded. Are you saying you keep 100% of your captures?

I keep about 95% of what I shoot. I discard those that are OOF, way over/under exposed or just plain bad.

Why would you store images that you don't even intend to consider further?

It's like keeping negatives even though I know I won't print them. Hidden in one of those stored photos my be a real "keeper".

I bet most POTNers keep photos/files that they never plan to use later.

[philwillmedia]

Are you telling us that you sell 75-80% of the images on your website?

NO!...

But don't I wish.

As RDK pointed out, what I'm saying is that I expect 75-80% of images to be able to be sold if required.
As an example, when I shoot a rally, I might end up with a total 10 shots of each car from several locations. This means I expect that 7 or 8 are of a quality that I could sell if someone wanted them.
The crew from car #1 are not going to be interested in any shots of anyone else other than themselves, just the same as Car #54 is not going to want shots of #1. That means that I need to have as many images as possible that I can sell if I have a request from any crew or team.
I have some clients that buy every image I send them, others only a few.
Also, I may get a phone call from one of my magazine editors asking if I have any pics of #... I need to have a selection of images to be able to send if required.
When I submit images from an event to publications or agencies different images go to different agencies outlets...ie, the same image does not go to all agencies. Some may be similar shots, but not identical.

Hope that makes it a bit clearer.

[HappySnapper90]

Keeper: something I'd print at least 4x6. As time has gone by I take fewer shots and fewer keepers, but my requirements for a keeper have become higher over time.

I'm not one to shoot 500 photos is a day as consider 80% of them to be keepers. When you say you "keep" a photo, you should ask yourself: "what might I do with this photo?" If it's just to keep on a computer do I really need as many as I am keeping to either tell the story of the day or to document the event I was at?

I remember reading somewhere about a man who took 12,000 photos of his dog at the beach over a weekend and considered 1,500 of them "keepers". My goodness what would you do with 1500 shots of your dog at the beach from just a single weekend? So many of them had to have been very similar. Can you imagine a slide show with 1500 photos? :lol:

[20droger]

Our definition of a keeper is any picture we like. If we like it, we keep it. If we don't, it goes.

We sell or donate a majority of our keepers.

Practically nothing goes away permanently, however, as we archive all of our raw images except the truly horrible. And there are very few of those.

[Jeremy87]

Taking wildlife photos, means i have a heavy button finger. If i find a bird in a tree with good light etc the camera goes into continuous shooting mode and i don't stop shooting until the bird has flown off. This could mean 200-300 shots of the same animal. If i see an animal a long way away i will fire off half a dozen shots then walk closer fire off another half a dozen walk closer, i will do this until i am at a good working distance or the animal takes off. This means that the first 30 or 40 shots are made redundant by the last 5. How many of these are keepers? well it depends on your standards, how many shots of the same things you want to clog up your hard drive etc. If i go out in the field for a weekend I'll take anywhere between 500-1500 shots. Typically about 1/3rd of them get trashed straight away. my second run through will trash another 1/3rd again. Out of the remaining about 1 in 10 will get openned up in photoshop and processed 2/3rds of them i post up on facebook for my friends to see about 1/2 I will consider as an image that i would artistic and want to show off to the photographic community. So thats about 10 shots out of 500 making it onto my deviant art page out of about 250 keepers, sounds about right. Purely due repetition, no one wants to see 10 variations of the same frog. Of course if i was using film I'd never be able to afford the development i'd take a fraction of the number of photos and have a higher percentage of keepers. I'd also miss out on a heap of photos where the light is just that bit better or the focus is just in the right spot etc.

additional: when i take 200-300 shots of the same bird it not just standing there taking the photographic equivalents of pot shots. I fire off a 10 frame burst chimp it tweek the settings and repeat. The last 50 frames are normally the ones i get the quality photos from.

[LordV]

Think this rather depends on why and how you are taking the photos. I suspect many professional photographers keep photographs they do not like but the client may. I do macrophotography and often use focus stacking which may involve taking 20 photographs that are then stacked into one shot which I will keep. In the latter case is my keeper rate 5% or 100% ?
At the end of the day I keep the photographs I like which I would guess is around 20% of the original single photographs I took although I may be actually using around 90% of the photographs I took to get that 20% :)

Brian V.

[philwillmedia]

Thought I'd give this a bump just to see if there are any other thoughts.

[sjones]

Well firstly, I keep all of my shots, particularly nowadays, as I am not likely to toss out my film negatives. Yet, even when I was shooting digital, I would still retain all photos, even if I just left them (and that was most of them) in their RAW file format.

However, as to what I would define as a keeper; a photo that I like at the time (I could become gradually unimpressed with it in the future), one that I would share on my website or take the time to print out…nothing too complicated.

Percentage of keepers hovers around ten percent, and that's being pretty generous. If I were to select photos for a portfolio, it would drop to one to three percent, if that.

[blindman9135]

I've got a very heavy shutter finger with anything i do (why i upgraded to the 50D for the FPS to catch that "keeper" between the frames of my t1i). its not new that ill shoot 600 pics in a banquet out of those id say ill give 100 to the customer. Portraits and Candid pictures.

i define a keeper as a memory. anything that tells a story or means something to someone. if its a picture of a car, a person that doesn't like cars isn't going to care. Most manly guys don't care about Macro pictures of flowers and honey bees.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38772581@N04/4939496839/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38772581@N04/4939496839/

To a photographer this picture is a "throw away" the color balance is off, it was over exposed, shot from the hip, and blurry... but when i showed her, she said it was the best picture of the night(she never smiles and was surprised i caught her). not the kind of picture i like to give to my clients but somethings better than nothing. Later i fixed the color and sharpened it up a bit, this is just the original.