Do you keep EVERY picture you take?

I used to keep only the "good" ones, but have since opted for the more time saving option of just dumping everything to an external hard drive. When I burn CD's, though (as a back-up for the hard-drive), I usually burn only the "keepers"...

I archive all the photos except the one that are clearly out of focus or unsalvageable.

Mark

Once, in a fit of artistic frustration, I threw out several hundred negatives that I was not satisfied with.

Now, many years later, I *really* wish I had them back. Even if they were not the greatest photos ever taken, they were part of my life / art at the time. And some of them were photos of a New Orleans that will never exist again.

Keep them all. You truly can never go back to that moment again.

My keeper rate is approximately 60% since getting the 20D 13 months ago. Just installed a new 250gb drive yesterday for picture storage, 225gb free right now.

I certainly don't use them all (a very small fraction, actually), but I never delete any. CD's, DVD's and external hard drives are cheap enough to make it unnecessary. I have more than 400Gb of photos backed up now.

thomascanty wrote in post #2475203
I certainly don't use them all (a very small fraction, actually), but I never delete any. CD's, DVD's and external hard drives are cheap enough to make it unnecessary. I have more than 400Gb of photos backed up now.

Ditto here. If I take a picture of the floor, or something, I'll trash it in camera. Anything that makes it to the computer stays (don't ask me why). I've got many badly OOF shots triple backed up on three hard drives just waiting to be burned to DVD.

I'm not sure which to choose.

All the pictures I upload to my computer I keep, but I chimp a lot. Any down time I have while I'm out shooting I look through my shots carefully and trash quite a few.

I do not keep every one...

I keep all of the originals and burn them out to DVD Disks, for future use. Even the bad ones. Every time I fill a 4G card, I burn it to disk. How else can you test the lastest super duper I can fix anything software without havingsome bad ones to test with

--Evan

I have just about every picture (digital) i've ever shot, all backed up on cd or dvd
Bad and good.
Learning from both.

You never know when a bad shot may come in handy. I keep everything.

Gods no...

I have been shooting anything and everything that don't move out of my way fast enough.
Hopefully one day I will be competent enough to attain 100% keeper rate but I have a feeling it's a long way off yet.

Mark_Cohran wrote in post #2474484
I archive all the photos except the one that are clearly out of focus or unsalvageable.

Same here.

I suppose for those who may be schooled in this or have gain some degree of proficiency would be willing to retain a higher ratio of shots ...

... but me .... out of a couple hundred shots ... I dump more than I keep (that is why I am digital and not film)

During the horse show season, I shoot for money. As this subject relies on very precise positioning, I will discard a certain number for technical reasons. However, I am sitting in front of 23 DVD's (this years output) that do qualify from that aspect.
I have over the years, needed to go back to the archives in cases where horses and sometimes people have passed on. Not a happy occurance, but one that has produced letters of gratitude for my efforts.

Workflow is basically....Camera/co​mputer/external drive/DVD.