Photos you keep (even the rubbish ones)

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badronald

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I was just thinking (need a sit down and a hobnob now).... My harddrive is getting full of photos i have taken, I even keep the rubbish ones. I was just wondering if any of you have separate folders for your best shots and dif folders for those memory type but rubbish shots and how many shots you just delete? Anyway maybe some of you could post up the shots that are proberly tech rubbish but have a personal memory or emoitional value to you.
such as this as shot I took of my Nephew:
04090600-1.jpg
 
That would make a fantastic pop art picture.
 
I keep pretty much everything I take unless it really is utter rubish (really out of focus for example) I try to split all my stuff into a folder based on topic and when they were taken and then final split each folder into 'Bad' 'Good' and 'Processed' I keep the bad ones because alot of my photography is on holidays etc and I like to keep the memories the good folder is full of the better pictures in there origional forms and the processed folder is for the finished article.
 
When I get back from a shoot I copy all my photos to a new folder on my hard drive and then use Adobe Bridge to star rate the photos

1* = out of focus, unwanted blurred (subject or camera) etc.
2* = Poor photos e.g. somthing wrong in composition, significant technical error (e.g. very blown highlights).
3* = OK photos - usually technically or compositionally OK (not great) with some PP required to be usable.
4* = Good photos - technically & compositionally good with very minor PP required if any.
5* = The cream of the crop, absolute perfection prize wining photos.

I then delete all 1* photos, I then review the 2* photos to see if they are salvegeable with significant PP, if so I mark them 3*. I then delete the 2* photos as well. I can usually get rid of 10-25% of the photos this way depending on the subject (sports can be as much as 50%). Anything sentiemental or personal value will end up a 3* photo and therefore safe.

I always perform some PP as I shoot in RAW so I save the PSD files in a sub folder called EDIT and then the final images (pre sharpening) are saved as final PSDs with a sharpened JPGs saved to a folder called JPGs for printing. I usually also save a 800 wide/tall version for Flickr and posting here.

With the price of storage I'm not bothered about how much space this takes up. The key is that it is organised.
 
Everything I shoot (unless it's deleted in-camera "That's horrible! Bin it now!" etc) gets imported into lightroom and then I'll have a quick skim through applying the rule of turds. Obviously rubbish or oof ones get binned and I leave the rest in one big file.

I'll then go through and move them into folders by category/subject within lightroom and edit from then on. Finished edits go into a sub-folder within the subject folder.

Of course that/s all in theory and very rarely happens in practice. It's amazing how quickly you can take a coupe of hundred shots and forget that you then have to find the time to review & edit them.
 
I keep most but I'm not that well organised, I do burn them to DVD though in case the HD dies
 
I go through all my new photos as soon as I get home.
For location pictures, the folder name is the location.
I delete all blurred photos immediately as nothing can be done with them.
I process all the remainder and crop them to size for print.
I transfer them to an elimination folder, go through them again and send what remains for printing.
I then burn them to a CD for archiving.
It takes some time to do all this but sometimes in the editing process, the final picture can be quite pleasing. If I am unsure whether to keep a photo or not SWMBO normally lets me know!
 
Most of my culling takes place in the RAW processor - if it's a keeper it gets processed to JPG / TIF, if not it's deleted.

Once I have a batch of processed files, I go through each one in PS using this autoloader script - it's worth it's weight in gold. As I'm working through the batch and I find an image I then decide I don't want to keep I paint a big red cross over it and save it. When I've finished the batch I browse the folder and delete all those with a cross visible on the thumbnail.

Deletes are permanent.

I delete about 80% of what I shoot, be it wedding, landscape, whatever.
 
Just started with my bridge camera and vowed to keep organised. Like the rating idea a lot :thumbs: think I might adopt that.

I wish the technology would allow me to just label as I shoot via speech to text it would make life so much easier.

Just finished scanning all the old film pictures that we have plus old photos from the rest of the family, everything on disk now :nuts: what a task but at least the kids are more likely to view them. This one took me back, just a quick snap on a very old ps but not repeatable, now in their teens and can't get them near each other :lol:

3LittleKids.jpg


If I had to delete the rubbish ones I would only have a handful to look at :lol:
 
Have one just like the OP's of my daughter, it's soft and not great composition but I love it all the same. Some shots are kept as memories of the day rather than artistic objects.

The problem with dSLR's and a lot of users is that they forget to take [what I would call] snapshots.
 
Headbanger Wren - my favourite duff shot!

blurry.jpg
 
I haven't got to that stage yet, still plenty of room on computers harddisk, but will probably start getting around to deleting the out of focus/irretrievable shots during the winter when I can't get out.

I organise most of my photo's in picasa which is free from google, mostly shot Jpeg's, although venturing into the world of RAW, which looks like a world of pain and may need something more indestructable.
 
For me, deleting shots has always been part of the learning process - it's important to understand your mistakes as well as your successes and by making the decision to keep or bin a photo you are making a choice about what you want your photography to be - as long as each time you do it you know why / how you made the 'mistake' when you took the shot.

I don't delete in-camera for that reason - I want to see the data on the big screen.
 
I think the star system sounds like a fantastic way to get organised. To be honest though, I process all the ones I like after a shoot. I know the rest can be binned.

I do have about 4TB hard drive space across m y various machines, so I have enough space to keep if need be.

Gary.
 
Can't bring myself to delete this. It holds no special memories, the skaters are all strangers to me. For some reason I like it. :thinking:

Skaters2.jpg
 
Headbanger Wren - my favourite duff shot!


Looks like a bird with a bad hair do :D

A duffer to you, but great to me, really like it.
 
Richmond, i can see why!!
It is excellent. The colors and the fele you get form it are spot on. :)
 
I only delete some shots when they are 100% c*** otherwise I just keep them all. I've got a massive hard drive to put them on so I don't see the point of just keeping super shots. I use them as a way of teaching me not to take a photo like that again and how to improve :D
 
I only delete REALLY bad photos, where I've missed the subject, or if it's totally out of focus. The rest i keep as a reminder of what to work on next time, what not to do etc! And sometimes I've even gone back and looked at photos I was planning on deleting in a mass photo purge and found I actually quite like them!

Love the headbanging wren by the way!
 
I only really delete the very rubbish ones.
 
visualisetheworld said:
I only really delete the very rubbish ones.
Click to expand...

Same as me, so i don,t need a big hard drive as i only have 10 left :lol::lol:



Seriously i recently bought a new hard drive so i could put all my pics onto it and free up the one on my PC, i'm guilty of taking lots of photos and not processing the whole batch thinking i will go back to them later, then i go out and take some more and do exactly the same, and so it go's on, sometimes i,'m looking through photos and think bloody hell i remember taking those about 8 months ago and forgot all about them, does anyone else do this or am i just a lost cause :lol::lol:
 
h4rri said:
The problem with dSLR's and a lot of users is that they forget to take [what I would call] snapshots.
Click to expand...

I agree!
 
HanC said:
I agree!
Click to expand...

And i will 2nd that, i think sometimes we can get to bogged down with all the kit we have got or have'nt got and the technicality's, and forget all about the fun side of photography and probably why we enjoyed it in the first place :shrug:
 
tis very true, I personally find it very annoying when certain family members insist on photographing every conceivable angle of any family 'event' instead of actually enjoying the occasion. And I'm probably just as bad!

Skating shot is great BTW
 
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