To Keep or Not To Keep

[geoffsta]

I was just about to do a bit of a cull of the images on the computer. When a thought entered my mind.

What is the rate of keepers that members get?
I know when I first started and used Auto I had a fair success rate. But then I started using manual and it all went down hill. 10% if I was lucky would turn out good enough to leave on the computer. Of course then I used Paint.net to do most of my processsing, and I can only do so much with that.
Now it's about 90>% of keepers and I process about 40% of those.

What photos do you keep on your computer or backup?
Now I have heaps of images on my computer in my photo drive and more in my backup drive. Each drive is 500 Gig.
Do you get rid of the ones you think you'll never use again. Or do you hoard them thinking that one day you might get back to them?

[jjnic]

I use to work on the premise that the more photos you took the more chance you have of getting somthing decent, then i'd upload them and find a lot of duds. I am now trying to take less and think more about what i am doing, also I am starting to delete from the camera cause it is easier to delete as you go than sit down go through your files and delete, and i'm too lazy to do that! Hopefully now what i upload will be worth keeping.

[Kaktus]

I am just as useless in deleting my not so good digital images as I was with discarding the actual prints of the film days. Nowadays I put them in a subfolder marked 's/b deleted'

[fabian628]

depends what im shooting. When shooting macro keepers can be 5%-50% usually. Sports, I try to cull most multiple shots although they are still good, only a small percentage i keep. Then there is just random shots that are different but not so great, I may just delete from laptop but keep on a hard drive

[mechawombat]

Every photo stays

It is a reminder of how stupid and brash I can be and also how I am getting better

[Derek-C]

I tend to look at the image and if I would hang it on the wall I may keep it otherwise it goes .

Family ones I tend to be not so critical.

When I am gone I cant see my kids keeping them just because I took them.A pic of a Dam or Mountain or bird wont mean anything to them.

Derek

[FilthyAmatuer]

I keep all photos of family, events (bdays, weddings, parties, etc), travel and work. Though most photos are more for memories than creating something beautiful to look at. Most of these are just jpegs so dont take up too much space.

When I take photos for fun (like go out with the purpose of taking photos) then for a while i kept everything, but lately I have been going back and deleting a lot of my old photos, if it doesn't look interesting or has no meaning it is often deleted, meaning I probably keep 20% of these photos.

This brings me to another question. How do you all catalog your photos. I used to do it by date then had a description, but now I have too many that I have started putting them in categories, eg (travel, events, work, 4wd, windsurfing, etc). But it is annoying because everytime you change things you loose your paths in lightroom.

[Art Vandelay]

. I used to do it by date then had a description, but now I have too many that I have started putting them in categories, eg (travel, events, work, 4wd, windsurfing, etc). But it is annoying because everytime you change things you loose your paths in lightroom.

If you create folders and move stuff around using the right hand panel in the lightroom library, all history and changes etc stay with the photos.

As for deleting, I'm savage in the initial cull, clear out some more in the second cull & then often revist folders down the track for another dose of savagery. The lightroom rating system is good for this. Keeping in mind this is mainly birds/sports/moving subjects where your keeper rate is a lot less than other genres. I was just thinking about this the other day, am hitting the delete button on images that previously would have been keepers. I guess in a weird way that's a type of progress you can measure.-- the quality of your deletes.

[jim]

I eventually keep well under 1%, though the process takes years and years and years...

[Tjfrnds]

I delete really really bad shots that are out of focus / not interesting etc, but I keep the majority so I can look back and learn from mistakes. I never delete any family/friends photos though..even the bad ones...they are all lovely memories for me

[James T]

I keep most, no point in deleting them. And I sometimes get people asking for alternates to a shot, or some specific thing that I didn't deem interesting / good enough.

.. also I am starting to delete from the camera cause it is easier to delete as you go than sit down go through your files and delete, and i'm too lazy to do that! Hopefully now what i upload will be worth keeping.

That may make your card more likely to corrupt as the camera tries to shuffle data around on the fly. Also, you shouldn't judge a shot in the moment off a tiny LCD screen. Just buy a bigger card.

[kiwi]

I'm a ruthles chimper - I'd say 50% shots dont survive past data capture (James I have not heard of data corruption concerns re deleting from card)
Of the 50% I load, probably 50% get deleted immediately

So 1 in 4 get stored ?

Of those 1 in 10 get posted to my website

Of those maybe 1/20 get posted here

So, hmm, what's that make the % ?

[Namus]

Probably around 20-25% for sports; still-life/walkabout shots is around 50-60% (minimum) as I'm learning to stop and think about my shots rather than just randomly pressing the shutter button.