How many photos you delete?

[lmchelaru]

I only shoot 1 photo per engagement, and it is so amazingly flawless that I keep 2.

 

[Miaow]

Most of them I'm very picky

 

[Actor]

I never destroy my negatives.

 

[ArtphotoasiA]

I personally believe every photo you display, or show to people, or include in a set should all be portfolio quality and able to stand on its own.

This is a good point Sam

 

[boogschd]

20% ?

mostly because people keep blinking/moving or looking away at the camera
other reason is me misfocusing or camera shake

 

[Mulewings~]

Since I 'shoot' a lot of animals, I delete quite a few of those due to head movement at the shutter release or blinking of an eye.

Otherwise when doing plants and fungi...not many. Most of them stay still enough for me to get the right shot.

 

[skieur]

It depends on the project. The more specific and specialized the project, the fewer I keep out of those that were not used. On the assignment to shoot dog poo, I did not keep any that were not used. :lmao: I did not keep any of the teeth Xray shots either that were shot for a presentation, except for those that were used. Perhaps I should have kept the ones from the car wrecking yard, but I was too busy dodging the starving dobermans to take any super creative shots. I had to enter over a barb wire fence. Another of my more interesting assignments.

skieur

 

[Natalie]

I usually end up deleting 70-90% of the photos I take before I even download them onto the computer. But that's because I mainly shoot wild animals, and small ones at that, which aren't the most cooperative subjects. While still in the field, I delete the ones that came out horrible and keep the good ones and those I'm not sure about (just in case). Once I've put them on my computer, I end up deleting maybe 5-10% of those.

The vast majority of shots I take come out slightly out of focus, like this:

 

[Sam6644]

^thats cool as hell

 

[george elsasser]

Depends on what I am doing, when shooting journalistic style weddings (currently on sabbatical from) I would shoot 1600+ and pick out about 600 for the client, maybe 5 images would be used on my website or for my portfolio.

Shooting a loose portrait style of a wedding client, shoot 3-400 frames deliver 40-60 for them to look at.

Shooting advertising or institutional work far less, in the past 100-120 frames deliver 3-6 images. Because you only give them stuff you would like to see published, anything that is slightly weaker - they will decide is the one they like.

For my personal work displayed on this site it varies sometimes 2-4 outings generate nothing I feel is strong enough to show. Other times I may make 1-3 from an outing I might print (an outing for me now is 300 to 800+ frames). Depends on so many things, street photos (more) static subjects (less). When I was shooting film I would use 6+ rolls with digital the sky is the limit, but I always shoot till the light is gone or my brain and body are pretty exhausted regardless if its film or digital.

For personal work I am finding a better work flow working with 2 bigger HDs and pulling the good stuff off of them, prior all the back up DVDs, CDs and endless deleting was killing way too many hours. Also with personal work I like to revisit to see if I have overlooked something or if there are threads I would like to follow or my aesthetic perspectives have shifted and there is still work in the folders that might have things to teach me.

My blog: Shutter

 

[Dusty Miller]

Yesterday I spent the afternoon in Old Sacramento and shot at least 100 images. I have 23 left. Quite often I shoot "extras" just to try a different exposure or a slightly different composition. The wonderfull thing about digital photography and a 32 GB card is that I can shoot ALL DAY and delete until the cows come home and end up with a small group of images that I'm happy with. I'm very wary of "fallin in love with" my own photos.

 

[Renol]

I'm still learning, but typically I delete anywhere from 10-20%. Out of that 80% only about 10% are what I would deem "print worthy". I typically delete the shots I really can't do anything with to fix or the duplicates.

It also depends on how much I shoot. I recently shot for my Grandmother's big 90th birthday party. Out of 150 some odd shots I kept 104 but would only consider maybe 10% print worthy. Learned a valuable lesson that shoot!

 

[Phranquey]

Probably about 98% deletion, since most of my photography is birds & storms. For birding, I usually have the camera set on 3 to 5 bracket frames on high speed shutter... they move around so much you don't have time to make exposure adjustments for each individual background situation, and for storm chasing, I can take hundreds (if not thousand +) of shots to get one or two real keepers.
If I get a few that I'm really happy with, I see no point in keeping the "iffy" ones.

 

[jokyrock]

may be i keep 10-15 of 100 pictures

 

[flightless_beaker]

I keep pretty much everything but I only work on a very small percentage. I have the shoot now figure it out later mentality. It may seem like a good shot but when I blow it up on my computer, I decide not to work on it. Otherwise, most of the shots I take are the same frame but I change different settings in my camera, such as different shutter speeds, aperatures for depth of field, exposure and even meterings. Then I decide which I feel is the best. But that's mostly nature. When I'm fully controlling what I'm shooting, my keep rate is higher.