Reading mode: Light Dark

Do you save your duds?

Go to last post
J

jjl

Leading Member
Messages
743
Reaction score
9
Location
Portland, OR, US
Just a general question... Pros? Amatuers? Do you save/backup your "dud" photos - those that aren't quite good enough to make the quality cut. Or, do you delete them for good?

They sure do take up a lot of space, but who knows if you got some mundane photo that could be important some day?

Just curious what people do & why.

-Jonathan
--
http://www.phlumf.com
 
Yes. Never know when photos will be useful.

On the other hand, I've produced photos that pleased me as a photographer (and other p's I've shown) that did not interest the client.

What have others experienced?

Dave
Toronto
 
No, I delete my duds and never look back. If I dislike them, I prefer not to let them out into the world. And even if one would occasionally prove useful, it is still not worth the resources to save all of my duds for this reason. Also, I find the activity of analyzing my pictures and deciding what is not up to par, and thinking about why, and what to do about it, and then excising my failures, is important to my photographic vision.
--
http://www.mikespinak.com
 
Culling photos is one of the most important steps in my workflow. I use Pixort my culling and sorting. On the first pass, I remove the "garbage". On the second pass, I remove the ones I just don't like. The two sets get archived on CD or DVD, put into the "garbage box" and allowed to collect dust. They're there if ever needed, but otherwise erased entirely from the work and backup harddrives and totally forgotten.

After taking out the garbage, I do as many passes necessary to make the final cut as lean as possible to get the job done. These "second choice" photos are NOT deleted, however. But they are set aside and they are not processed.
--
Michael Thomas Mitchell
http://michaelphoto.net
 
Are we talking true duds (totally no good) or just ones you don't like?

I've had photos I didn't care for at the time, but then going back after a long stretch of time I see some I really like that for some reason at the time I didn't think much of. This also works in reverse. Ones I thought were good turn into just "okay" shots.

Immediately following captures the emotional attachment is at it's strongest.

You can fool yourself into reading more into a photo then is really there... something no one else would see since they don't have the emotional attachment that you do.

And vice versa. Going back and seeing ones you weren't strongly attached to and now "seeing" that it stands well on it's own.

--
Jim
echelon2004 said:
Most images doesn't improve over time...
--
Anders

Some of my pictures can be seen at;
http://teamexcalibur.se/US/usindex.html

event photography and photo journalism
Click to expand...
 
I shoot RAW+Small JPG (See Note below for why.) The RAW and original JPGs are kept. Why? Who knows. Lazy? Maybe I'll find a use for them later? I can't decide? Who knows. All of the above I guess

I have gone back to older sets and found pics that at first I didn't like so I'm glad I keep them.

As to how I cull the Keepers. First JPGs are separated from the RAW images and moved to a JPG directory. Then I look at all the raw images in a viewer. This gives me an idea of what I have over all. The I bring them all into Capture One and process every image that seems worthy. Then back to the viewer to cycle through the processed images for more deleting. OOF? Poor Framing? Repeated/Similar Shot? What ever the reason the converted JPG is deleted. Then finally into Bridge and to Photoshop for final PP, resizing, and sharpening. Sometimes I'll take one more pass after final processing and delete an image or two.

Note: I shoot RAW+Small JPG because many times my wife will want to scan the images and pick out a few for her use. Small JPG is quick and easy to view from just about any computer and from those images she can tell me what she likes and I can add them into my RAW conversion workflow. Or if the Small JPG is sufficient for her use she has the image right there.

--



Rob Kircher
My Stuff: http://www.pbase.com/rkircher
 
I'm an amatuer, but occasionally I look back and find myself liking some old photo that i didnt really like before. I should delete more though, storage space is becoming an issue.
--



Technical Info: Roseart U.S.A. Gold #2 pencil, Pentel High Polymer eraser, Academie sketch pad drawing paper. Drawn clumsily under relatively poor light.

http://www.geocities.com/wild_tiger_1

http://flickr.com/photos/selrahcharles/
 
I save everything.. just lazy.. But I ran across this.. It was a discussion about film or digtial on photo.net... I read it someplace else too..

"But the best instance I've heard of so far as to why film still has advantages in the commercial world (well, this particular instance was photojournalism)is this. There was a White House press photographer who was shooting a Bill Clinton event in the 90's. According to him there were about 30 other photographers at the event shooting as well, but he was the only one shooting film. Everyone else was shooting digital. Typically in digital shooting, particularly journalism, all relevant & outsatnding images are saved, and any that are irrelevent or repetitive are generally edited and dumped.(Who has that kind of hard-drive space to save every image shot digitally?)Well several months after the Clinton event, this press photographer was watching the news and saw the first breaking coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. When he saw her face he was convinced that he had seen her before. So he hired a photo researcher to go through his thousands of images (all film), and what he came up with was the famous shot of Clinton hugging Monica Lewinsky in a grip and grin line. He said that every other photographer there likely had that same shot, but since they were all shooting digital they all went home and dumped that image because at the time it was completely irrelevent. But because he was still "old school" so to speak, and shooting film, that "worthless" image ended up making him thousands and thousands of dollars. In fact, I believe he stated it has been his best selling image so far. Lesson learned. You never know when an image like that may gain relevance."
--
Duke Beattie
http://www.pbase.com/dcbeattie
Are we having fun yet?
 
good point, dvd-rs are cheap, i tend to dump my duds to dvdrs and forget 'em, but they still exist. somewhere in that heap of dvdrs. i only delete the truly awful ones that i'd be embarrassed to have seen, (i do crank out quite a few of these) and i do that in-camera.
 
I save a lot of rubbish and sometimes the rubbish gets useful. I tend to fast review my previous work and 3, 4 months later I mercilessly delete what is at the time definetly rubbish. I never get rid of photos that have been taken recently, too attached.

What is interesting is that I tend to rework old files and "see" new things on them.

Antother thing, I only keep JPEGs or TIFFs that were printed. All other phots are kept in RAW.
--
Paulo Ferreira
(equipment in profile)
http://www.pauloferreira.co.uk
http://www.azuzarte.com
http://www.pbase.com/pauloferreira
http://www.pbase.com/sigmadslr/paulo_ferreira
 
It depends on what you label a 'dud'

Major technical erros, light problems etc. go straight away.

But a lot of other stuff gets kept.

But then, no disrespect intended, as a pro, a lot of my rejects will be better than a lot of amatuers keepers.

Lots of my 'rejects' though i have sold a couple of years later. Especially when one celeb or another suddenly comes into the limelight again.

Or with my travel stufff, when an area in suddenly in the news again.
 
i keep everything...
only because i have had computer crashes and lost everything..

now i make a dvd copy of all pics before they touch my computer.

then the dvd goes in the computer , delete the duds and edit the rest..
then burn the edited ones back onto another set of dvds.

i end up with 2 dvds; before and after.
keep nothing on the hard drive.
 
I keep all my "duds" until the final print order.

The cut the "duds" from the proofs I show clients but don't delete them. Sometimes you find an unexpected use for "duds."

Case in point, one of my recent portrait sessions was a family with eight adults and two small infants. After 30-45 inutes the infants were not cooperative and even when I managed to get a shot of both infants looking forward then at least one adult would be looking the wrong way or blinking. The solution was to digitally composite several photos so that all the adults and the infants were looking forward and smiling. In that case I combined three "duds" to make a perfect shot.

Sure, it took several hours to composite the photos without obvious signs of a composite, but the end result would have been impossible if I deleted the "duds."

Once I've confirmed that the client is happy with the order then I delete the "duds." I've got too many clients and too many photos to archive and there's no point in wasting disk space on images that will never be used for anything.

--
http://www.jjjphotography.com
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Keyboard shortcuts

f
Forum
m
My threads
Mobile site
About
Editorial content
Cameras & Lenses
Community
All content, design, and layout are Copyright © 1998–2025 Digital Photography Review All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction in whole or part in any form or medium without specific written permission is prohibited.
When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission.
©GPS Media - Guides, Products, Services.
Back
Top