Do you delete the not-so-good photos?

Just curious, when doing house-keeping of the shots, how do you decide which photos to delete and which ones to keep?

I used to take burst to prevent shaky pictures. It's easy to weed out completely blur ones, but when all shots came out good, it's tough to choose only one. It's even harder for the candid of movement picture of loved ones. Even when the outcome is not very good -but still visible- but it captured different expressions can't bear to delete, even when it's not so sharp or slightly blur/out of focus.

Sherly said:

Just curious, when doing house-keeping of the shots, how do you decide which photos to delete and which ones to keep?

I used to take burst to prevent shaky pictures. It's easy to weed out completely blur ones, but when all shots came out good, it's tough to choose only one. It's even harder for the candid of movement picture of loved ones. Even when the outcome is not very good -but still visible- but it captured different expressions can't bear to delete, even when it's not so sharp or slightly blur/out of focus.

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With memory being very affordable these days, I keep photos if I'm ever in doubt. I can always delete them later but can't get them back if I ever change my mind.

I do. It is vital, IMHO, to not assume that any one person's workflow is appropriate for any other person! And certainly, that any particular workflow is "correct" or "incorrect". There are just too many types of photographers, styles, scenes, subjects, budgets, etc.

The vast bulk of my photography is live concerts. I take roughly 100 shots of each act, and there are usually three acts per show (this varies widely). On average, I come home with about 300 shots— but there are weeks where I will average over 500 per day. I cull the photos per band down, giving me 30 to 50 "keepers." Of those, perhaps 20 get published on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (tagging the venues and performers as appropriate). The rest I keep, in case the band or venue needs particular marketing material. Many of my shots have the subject near the edge or corner, leaving the rest of the image for overlaid text (concert posters, etc). These shots are not normally what I publish, but I keep them because so often I need them for these other marketing uses.

I am frequently in very dark venues, and that combined with odd subject placement means I rely on MF quite a bit. Thus— a lot of out of focus shots that get deleted! But sometimes I have a string of five or six shots where they were all in focus. Either I got lucky, or I'm just getting better at MF (I keep telling myself it is the latter). So with a number of shots that are almost identical, I will usually pick the two that are the most distinct in some way, and delete the rest.

After processing the batch for an act, I move them to a server for more-or-less permanent storage. I have an SSD on my workstation, which is faster access than my server but of limited capacity.

It is unlikely that the workflow I just described matches your needs, or for that matter anyone else's (it might not even be the best for me). But for my photography, it works and is familiar to me.

Absolutely. Bad, marginal photos and ones that will never be used are deleted.

--
Howard

Sherly said:

Even when the outcome is not very good -but still visible- but it captured different expressions can't bear to delete, even when it's not so sharp or slightly blur/out of focus.

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Personally, I can find more reasons to ditch most of mine.


Unless I'm just recording something (about 80/90% keep rate),
I find trying that little bit extra for something different,
results in keeping only about 5%, if I'm honest with myself.

MediaArchivist said:

It is unlikely that the workflow I just described matches your needs, or for that matter anyone else's (it might not even be the best for me). But for my photography, it works and is familiar to me.

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In contrary, it's similar to my situation, although not in a professional context. I used to go for events, such as cosplay parties, etc and took the stage performance. OMD has more lags in-between the burst shots, making the movement captured were not identical and hard to choose one.

If I may ask more on your workflow, what tool/method do you use to select the other hundreds of shots? On Macbook Pro, I'm using the quick preview, but need to zoom in every pictures to locate the blur. Lightroom is actually a better tool but it's quite a hassle to delete the original photos while reviewing.

It takes a bit to get into "Delete Ruthlessly" mode, once a year or so. The distance of time after taking a series helps with objectivity, IMO.

Sherly said:

MediaArchivist said:

It is unlikely that the workflow I just described matches your needs, or for that matter anyone else's (it might not even be the best for me). But for my photography, it works and is familiar to me.

Click to expand...

In contrary, it's similar to my situation, although not in a professional context. I used to go for events, such as cosplay parties, etc and took the stage performance. OMD has more lags in-between the burst shots, making the movement captured were not identical and hard to choose one.

If I may ask more on your workflow, what tool/method do you use to select the other hundreds of shots? On Macbook Pro, I'm using the quick preview, but need to zoom in every pictures to locate the blur. Lightroom is actually a better tool but it's quite a hassle to delete the original photos while reviewing.

Click to expand...

In LR, it's quick to just mark unwanted photos as Rejected (tap X to reject a photo), then after you're done reviewing, have it delete all of the rejected photos at once. I think the shortcut for deleting all rejected is Shift-Backspace.

As far as keeper rate, I'm usually at about 25-50%. Fairly high, I think. But I try to be more deliberate about the photos I take these day (shooting fewer, better shots). Shooting in RAW helps, because I know I'll be able to do more recovery later for slightly botched shots, so I shoot fewer. And the fact that RAW takes up more space is further motivation to take more care and shoot fewer, better photos.

J

Ron Poelman said:

Personally, I can find more reasons to ditch most of mine.

Unless I'm just recording something (about 80/90% keep rate),
I find trying that little bit extra for something different,
results in keeping only about 5%, if I'm honest with myself.

Click to expand...

Maybe there's no specific reason... for now. If the shot is not there, maybe I won't regret it, as if the shot was never taken.

If there's a reason, it's for the memory of moment which won't came back, especially for the loved ones. When my dog was gone, I wished to have more shots of its expression that I now shot whatever pose and clumsy faces my current dog is doing (scratching, sniffing, yawning, etc).

Bob Tullis said:

It takes a bit to get into "Delete Ruthlessly" mode, once a year or so. The distance of time after taking a series helps with objectivity, IMO.

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Make sense. Great idea.

I use Lightroom. I have no difficulty deleting while I am reviewing, when I don't like the image I am viewing I press "x" and then periodically "delete rejected photos".

I find it helpful to lighten the first photo and bump the clarity, then sync settings for the entire batch. I can always revert those settings, of course, but it makes it a little easier to determine keepers that way.

Paradox of choice. You are never happy if you have multiple choices and you have difficulties to make the decision and after it you wonder that other would have been better.

So, don't take many... Take one and be happy you have one, even if one little blurry one as it doesn't matter...

Bottom line yes. Like shooting concerts I shoot events and depending on the shoot I can come home with 10K frames or even more. Workflow consists of several initial reviews to remove OOF, badly composed, misdirected shots.

This general leaves me with about 75-80% of my inital shooting. After about a year I go through and looks for individual "keeper" shots and scrap the rest. This gets me down to about 10% of the original shoot.

My hiking and travel shots I do a more thorough initial review and delete bad shots and pretty much keep everything else.

Family shots including pets are almost exempt from deletion. We you lose family or a pet, you realize you never took enough photos....even if you did, you still want one more.

Pardon me while I go get another 5TB Drive

Tommi K1 said:

Paradox of choice. You are never happy if you have multiple choices and you have difficulties to make the decision and after it you wonder that other would have been better.

So, don't take many... Take one and be happy you have one, even if one little blurry one as it doesn't matter...

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It's as if you read my mind I like how you put it as "paradox of choice".

MediaArchivist said:

I use Lightroom. I have no difficulty deleting while I am reviewing, when I don't like the image I am viewing I press "x" and then periodically "delete rejected photos".

I find it helpful to lighten the first photo and bump the clarity, then sync settings for the entire batch. I can always revert those settings, of course, but it makes it a little easier to determine keepers that way.

Click to expand...

jooyoonchung said:

In LR, it's quick to just mark unwanted photos as Rejected (tap X to reject a photo), then after you're done reviewing, have it delete all of the rejected photos at once. I think the shortcut for deleting all rejected is Shift-Backspace.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the Lightroom advise. I shall go back and try it out.

Just to confirm my understanding, does it mean you import all photos from memory card to LR -> review and filter in LR -> do post processing -> export out?

I used to import all photos to LR library, especially vacation photos. Not all were going for post-processing. How much space in HDD will LR library took, e.g. when importing 16GB worth of pictures (and keep 80% of it)?

Sherly said:

Just to confirm my understanding, does it mean you import all photos from memory card to LR -> review and filter in LR -> do post processing -> export out?

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Correct. In my case, I have an additional step at the end. I use LR to move the folder to an external drive (in my case a mounted file system on a server). By using LR to move the files, it keeps its internal database of file pointers in sync as well as keep my library view less cluttered.

Sherly said:

I used to import all photos to LR library, especially vacation photos. Not all were going for post-processing. How much space in HDD will LR library took, e.g. when importing 16GB worth of pictures (and keep 80% of it)?

Click to expand...

I think LR purges preview images and cleans up its files as images are deleted, assuming you "reject" and "delete" from within LR. But I am not sure about that. I have 145 thousand photos in my collection, and my LR catalog file is 3.4GB and preview file is 9.5GB.

Agiledogs said:

Bottom line yes. Like shooting concerts I shoot events and depending on the shoot I can come home with 10K frames or even more. Workflow consists of several initial reviews to remove OOF, badly composed, misdirected shots.

This general leaves me with about 75-80% of my inital shooting. After about a year I go through and looks for individual "keeper" shots and scrap the rest. This gets me down to about 10% of the original shoot.

My hiking and travel shots I do a more thorough initial review and delete bad shots and pretty much keep everything else.

Click to expand...

Pretty much similar to my workflow, except for the 1-year review. I shall apply this.

Agiledogs said:

Family shots including pets are almost exempt from deletion. We you lose family or a pet, you realize you never took enough photos....even if you did, you still want one more.

Click to expand...

Well-said.

Agiledogs said:

Pardon me while I go get another 5TB Drive

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Please count me in.

One vacation consumed 32+16GB of the 256GB space in the Macbook Pro. I need to do housekeeping + bigger drive.

MediaArchivist said:

Sherly said:

Just to confirm my understanding, does it mean you import all photos from memory card to LR -> review and filter in LR -> do post processing -> export out?

Click to expand...

Correct. In my case, I have an additional step at the end. I use LR to move the folder to an external drive (in my case a mounted file system on a server). By using LR to move the files, it keeps its internal database of file pointers in sync as well as keep my library view less cluttered.

Click to expand...

Good idea. I've been looking for some workflow in dealing with large numbers of pictures, and this sounds very doable.

MediaArchivist said:

MediaArchivist said:

I used to import all photos to LR library, especially vacation photos. Not all were going for post-processing. How much space in HDD will LR library took, e.g. when importing 16GB worth of pictures (and keep 80% of it)?

Click to expand...

I think LR purges preview images and cleans up its files as images are deleted, assuming you "reject" and "delete" from within LR. But I am not sure about that. I have 145 thousand photos in my collection, and my LR catalog file is 3.4GB and preview file is 9.5GB.

Click to expand...

Wow, that's not bad. Thank you for sharing.

It all comes down to keepers and trash. If the scene or subject is important, you spend more time analyzing and cull the OOF or bad shots. When they are 'snap shots', I'm ruthless now. Delete the garbage. I back up the keepers 3 times. Its so easy to keep pics that are basically redundant or dull. IMO.

Sherly said:

Just curious, when doing house-keeping of the shots, how do you decide which photos to delete and which ones to keep?

I used to take burst to prevent shaky pictures. It's easy to weed out completely blur ones, but when all shots came out good, it's tough to choose only one. It's even harder for the candid of movement picture of loved ones. Even when the outcome is not very good -but still visible- but it captured different expressions can't bear to delete, even when it's not so sharp or slightly blur/out of focus.

Click to expand...

Probably not as many as I should, especially the duplicates.

However there is always the chance that something can be made of even a poor photo. Techniques such as ICM have show that even blurry images have artistic value. What at 1st glance appear to be a blurred and out of focus image can sometimes be made into something interesting. However it is not always instantly obvious how that can be done, or maybe yoyu come across a new tool or technique that can be applied

Memory and storage is cheap, so there is no great pressure to delete as much as there was. I'll leave that job for my descendants to work out