Having a clear out!

Quicksnapper

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Sara
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Looking for a specific image the other day I realised that my trusty Mac is groaning under the weight of literally thousands of images taken over around 4 years of enthusiastic amateur snapping. So the big clear out has started! Amongst the mediocre rubbish, oof shots, terrible composition and general detritus are one or two passable efforts which are being duly saved for posterity, but I'm working through all my stuff and deleting most of it.

So ... how often do you all review and delete stuff, or am I the only undisiplined and disorganised person out there who just keeps everything you download? Is it better to whittle them down immediately or keep everything for a few days while you think about it? Would just welcome a view on what everyone else does.

Thanks
 
I am really bad at it,got thought about 2000 shots i have taken over the winter,but so many more need to be done :(
 
I review just after I download the images from the camera, they further review before doing any processing.

That seems to save on having to do a big clear out.

I also back up all my images to 2 external hard drives
 
When I have a spare hour or two, which isn't too often, I do have a look through the many thousands of shots I've taken and relieve a few from my hard drive. The only ones I don't delete many shots from is the ones I've taken for other people. I wait till they've looked through them and tell me the ones they don't want first.
 
Good question! Personally I never delete anything I take. It's amazing how something you take that seems lacking in quality and worthless (a little blurry, dark, etc) can suddenly have some kind of meaning, I was aware of this when I started shooting in around 2004/2005 so I decided back then to just stick everything from the cards onto an external drive (I actually run two external drives that are carbon copies of each other so I always have a backup).

Each individual shooting session is named and dated so I can usually find what I want without too much hunting. :)
 
Funny you should mention that. My Mac is groaning un der the weight of thousands of shots so, when my dodgy shoulder is not giving me grief, I am going in and having a long overdue clear out - up to 2009 now! It is interesting to see how the photos have improved over time. Got to be more ruthless especially with file sizes increasing. I am going to try and make this a regular thing - probably monthly or something like that - to avoid this happening again. :bonk:
 
I sort most out when downloading off the card now, but with external HDD cost £60 or less for 1tb I find it simpler to just shove all the older shot on one and put it away somewhere safe just in case I want one back later.


Actually I keep my shots on 3 drives over 2 different locations.
 
Consider investing in a NAS, removes the hassle of a local drive becoming filled up over time :)
My main trouble is using the canon software I have it to extract everything and archive immediately on plugging the card in, by that time I've forgotten while making a cup of tea and won't view the files for 3 months unless it's something I've done for someone!

I also bought one of these: http://www.hiveraid.com/hive-desktop-2-usb3 - it was a bit pricey but it's british made, 12TB in size and completely flawless with the Mac (and fits in with the aesthetics)

But as others have said, ext drives are soo cheap these days that data redundancy is affordable and it will make it easier to archive and sort photos etc :)
 
I usually delete all the rubbish as soon as I download the photos from the card. Then I only need to worry about the good ones

* If it is an important shoot I'll keep the files on the card for a while just in case
 
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