How many photos do you keep/delete?

[DJdeRidder]

I sometimes get surprised reactions when I tell people that I only have a digital photo collection of 2788 aviation images. When I say I probably delete about 90% of my shots, they are flabbergasted!

Last weekend for example, I returned from Bulgaria with some 2400 images. After separating the 'snapshots' (which I keep apart) and deleting a lot of other photos, I currently have only 343 photos (14%) left. May not sound like a lot, but I photographed only 29 unique airframes. That's still an average of over 11 photos per aircraft/helicopter. More than enough for me and I will probably delete more in the coming weeks/months!

For me to delete an image it must be either 'low quality' (unsharp, bad composition, lack of light, uninteresting angle etc) or 'double' (normally I'm not gonna keep 6 images of a landing aircraft). I would even consider a topside shot of the orange demo F-16 against a blue sky at Koksijde as a double if I already have the same shot taken at another location! In such case I will compare the two and pick the best (normally based on sharpness). But that's just theoretical, I don't think that has ever happened to me. I often delete photos of aircraft taken in bad weather circumstances though, after I photograph the exact same aircraft in good weather (and yes I agree 'bad' weather sometimes results in interesting images).

I always try to improve my standards. If I don't like a photo today, I won't like it tomorrow or by the end of next year, so I just delete it. My aim is to only have interesting/usable photos in my collection and to improve the overall quality of my photos year by year.

How do you deal with this? How many photos do you have in total and how many do you normally delete? And do you think that the amount of photos you delete is related to the question whether you go for quality vs quantity?

I would be very interested to hear your opinions!

[Spooky]

Hi DJ,
I do recognize your story and have the same experience. However I only delete the RAW files that are unsharp, wrong lighting or missing parts. In general I even think that in the end I only use about 5% of my shots.
Anno

[Iwan Bogels]

Hi DJ,

My story is simple: I keep EVERY shot i take. The reason is twofold, as I don't want to spend time deleting and memory space costs almost nothing these days.

Later more, have to run for the train now.

Cheers,
Iwan

[wild weasel]

Hi DJ,

My story is simple: I keep EVERY shot i take. The reason is twofold, as I don't want to spend time deleting and memory space costs almost nothing these days.

Later more, have to run for the train now.

Cheers,
Iwan

Yeps, same here. An unsharp image will go to the carbagebin, but for the rest, i keep every image i have taken. About the percentage that make it to PP, i think 10% is a pretty good average....

Menno

[Wildpicture]

How do you deal with this? How many photos do you have in total and how many do you normally delete? And do you think that the amount of photos you delete is related to the question whether you go for quality vs quantity?

My way of working is very similar to yours. Normally I guess I would keep about 10% of images shot. I only keep the best images and no "doubles". Images that are not perfect get deleted immediately, unless they are unique to me. In that case I might keep them, but away from the rest in a folder called specials.

I can't see why I would want to keep all images, even if disk space is cheap.

[wild weasel]

How do you deal with this? How many photos do you have in total and how many do you normally delete? And do you think that the amount of photos you delete is related to the question whether you go for quality vs quantity?

My way of working is very similar to yours. Normally I guess I would keep about 10% of images shot. I only keep the best images and no "doubles". Images that are not perfect get deleted immediately, unless they are unique to me. In that case I might keep them, but away from the rest in a folder called specials.

I can't see why I would want to keep all images, even if disk space is cheap.

In case you´ll get a request of the same plane, but from a different angle or compostion. To be honest, there is some lazyness involved too

[Kleintje Pils]

I keep most of my shots, just for the memory. A couple of weeks ago I went through some shots from 2004 and had a big smile on my face to look at the event. Seeing all those active types compared to nowadays made me sad though...

[Iwan Bogels]

My story is simple: I keep EVERY shot i take. The reason is twofold, as I don't want to spend time deleting and memory space costs almost nothing these days.

Time for additional info....

Over the past 7 years, since I started shooting digital, I have accumulated a total of just under 1,3 Tb of photos. This includes both RAW + JPG from each photo, and no photos deleted at all. Just last month I made two full back-ups at external harddrives, costing me about 80 euro each. That's about 20 euro of memory each year. For this amount of money I don't need to reduce on he number of photos that I keep.

Needless to say that I too make selections of my best photos. I do this in Photo Mechanic 4.6.2, after which I make full copies of the selected photos to a "selection folder" inside the "full shoot folder". These selected photos will be imported in Lightroom 3.4, after which the will be processed. The interim result will be imported into Photoshop CS4 and get fine tuned where necessary. This final step will be saved as a PSD-file, which will in turn be converted for publication in magezines or on my website.

So all my folders include ALL photos from a particular trip, plus a subfolder with selection copies of the best photos, plus (very large) PSD-files and JPG's of the processed result. Still, these files all fitted on my external harddrive.

While making back ups last month, I decided to browse through my photos of the first few trips and really enjoyed being able to look at all that I had seen (and photographed). If I would have deleted 90% of the original photos, I'm pretty sure that I would not have been able to re-live the total experience as much as I could now. But I must agree, I don't check my old photos very often.

My return question would be: Why delete 90% of all photos ? It takes quite some time. If necessary you can also mark the best photos in Lightroom and show specific selections with one press of a button.

Looking forward to more replies in this topic.

Cheers,
Iwan

[DJdeRidder]

My return question would be: Why delete 90% of all photos ? It takes quite some time. If necessary you can also mark the best photos in Lightroom and show specific selections with one press of a button.

Yes of course you can use color labels, star ratings, etcetera in Lightroom but this is just my way of selecting the best image. I constantly use Lightroom's Compare View to compare two similar photos against each other. I delete the worst of the two and compare the 'winner' to the next image. If it is better, there's no need for me to keep the other one and compare it again next time. I'm not saying this is the best method, but it's the method that works best for me.

I do keep 'low-quality' shots if they are fun for watching back later (people shots, etcetera). I just don't need pics of landing F-16s to remember an event..

Edit: Poll added!

[spotter4life]

That's about 20 euro of memory each year. For this amount of money I don't need to reduce on he number of photos that I keep.

Agree. Why deleting pictures from a 1000€+ cam if the HDD is that cheap?

[DJdeRidder]

Agree. Why deleting pictures from a 1000€+ cam if the HDD is that cheap?

If storage boxes were for free, would you keep all your old newspapers? I wouldn't. They have no value to me. Just like the 90% of my photos I mentioned. That has nothing to do with money.


And to come back to Iwan's question:

My return question would be: Why delete 90% of all photos ? It takes quite some time. If necessary you can also mark the best photos in Lightroom and show specific selections with one press of a button.

That would be a fair reason not to delete 90%, but I save so much time afterwards that I think it is worth it. I think I have made between 5000 and 8000 photos of Dutch Chinooks at a wide number of locations. Still, I 'only' have 145 photos of them left in my collection. Only 3% of the photos is left, but at least I know for sure it's the best 3%. Even if I make a 60-page photo album dedicated to the Chinook, I still have more than enough photos! If I had 5000 photos, I really wouldn't know where to start, even with Lightroom labels (which I use as well). I would be in doubt all the time whether I didn't miss that unique shot when I made the selection..

Looking at the reactions I guess there are two groups of photographers:
1) Keep all photos, only delete the really bad shots (10-20%)
2) Only keep 'unique' photos, delete the rest (70-90%)
Or am I missing another method?

[CBR]

Generally I limit my pics to 4 or 5 pics per aircraft per event, the rest goes out. Not for the costs of storage but just to keep a workable overview of things. Also seriously working on reducing my intake though ...

[Pancake]

When i come home:
I store all the pictures on a ext. HD, and my computer. (700-800 /day)
I edit the best, and remove the rest from my computer.
After that, i store the best on the ext. HD
After all, (i think) i have 40-50 % removed, from my computer.
Once a year i make a back-up from my best pictures on DVD, and remove all of them from my computer. (to make space)
Regards,
Johan

[Aviaphotos]

Here's what I do when I come home:

1. Store all images at an external HDD.
2. Quick selection, all unsharp, bad angles, etc. will be thrown into the bin.
3. Editing of the remaining images; I will save one .jpg (i.e. FAZKU-P40-001.jpg) file and the original .CR2 (i.e. FAZKU-P40-001-O.CR2) file. During this step I will throw away other images that I don't like.
4. In the end I have two folders containing the edited .jpg and the original .CR2 files.
5. I will enter all info in an Excel file:


6. Every few months I will create an extra backup at an external HDD and store it in my locker at work, just to be shure I don't loose anything.

Regards,

Pim

[Erik_7Xi]

I keep everything to begin with and I shoot a *lot* of photos during events and photo shoots. As I mostly go out to shoot photos for a specific article or for a book that someone is working on, I usually only pick out maybe 20 - 30 photos that instantly appeal to me when I first preview my photos. I will go back later on for "seconds" after a week or so, to see whatelse catches my eye.

In between I do try to delete the obvious unwanted or bad shots - for me these are unsharp photos, photos with parts of the subject missing, unless I intended to zoom in on something. (there's a difference between a cockpit shot and cutting off the rear of the plane by mistake of course). The rest I will usually keep, even with the light is not ideal or the shot is not very interesting. It could well be that I may need a photo of that particular airframe or location etc later on.