Culling shots

Wasp1 · Mar 24, 2016

Recently one of my external Harddivers died on me and it was the one that I had my back up shots on. Took it to a place to retrieve my shots, I got a full run around. Took in a 1TB and when they were finished they asked for a 2 TB harddrive to put all my shots on. I understand why once I got home. Each and every shot was duplicated by 3 to 12 images of the same thing. In the defense of them the main people were not there and so this was my mistake.

It took me over a week of looking and either keep or delete. Then It got to the point where I got well and truly over it and just began to delete everything. I know I lost a few shots but I was over it at that stage.

Which bought me to this. I went back to my original photo file and look in there and seen shots which I, at that time thought they were top shots. Though now they would not even be where a 10 year old would want to keep. So it told me it was cull time.

My old camera was a 12.4 megapixel and my new one is a 24 megapixel, so the difference is easy to see. Some shot will just have to be in the keeper folder as they have got photo's of kids and pets. But things like flower and nature shot can be retaken and bought to a better quality to.
So the cull will begin today and I am hoping to half the amount of shots that I have kept. But the main thing is that I have improved and this could be down to knowing more and the new camera to. So it will have to be grit the teeth and just do it. So this is my plan of attack.

bribrius · Mar 24, 2016

i still have shots i took 25 years ago i dont know why you would want to get rid of them but okay

spiralout462 · Mar 24, 2016

I keep a photographic family history. The majority are not technically good pictures but they do what I want them to do, freeze a little slice of time.

I never had a digital camera over 8mp until 2014 so I don't understand your dissatisfaction with 12.4 mp. That much resolution should make nice size prints.

I admit, I do have a photo hoarding problem though. I rarely delete any.

Wasp1 · Mar 25, 2016

If you read this you would have noticed I have said family and pets and the ones that are not able to be replaced were not on the list.
On the list for example are landscape shot and moon shot which I I have got many better moon shots now. The landscape shots can be replace on any trip we do going back the way were they were taken from.
So its not a cull of the ones that can never be replaced at all.
I hope this make the reason to why a little more clearer.

SquarePeg · Mar 25, 2016

I take a lot of landscape and nature shots. I recently deleted thousands of photos from my hard drive and back up drive. Everything except family and vacation photos and a select few favorites. Now that I've slogged through that, I'm determined to only keep one or two best shots of each subject from future shoots instead of saving everything. When I edit something and decide to keep it, it'll go into a different folder so next time I'm deleting excess files it will be effortless.

Wasp1 · Mar 25, 2016

SquarePeg that is exactly what I am talking about. Not just doing a whole sale cull of all images.
Family shots are never on the list unless they are so bad as not knowing who is who in the shot.
But I have got a heap of more than doubles of landscape shots and I will be doing what you have just said.
At the same time I am making a folder called portfolio not that I am going to try to sell them but for me to go to the shots that mean the most to me for what ever reason.
Not sure how you take your shot but I'm thinking its like me take a heap and think I can fix that one up a little later. The later becomes like a year or so. If this is the case they are going, as I am always adding to the folders.

Woodsman · Mar 25, 2016

I have everything going back including scanning what I could from slide and film days and everything is backed up multiple times on different devices or media types. I dont delete them but only a very small percentage I would classify as good. But they are memories for me and thats whats important. That said as the file size grows, now up into the 25MB range on the D7200 I am becoming much more selective on the images I keep. Its forced me into a mind set change on what to keep going forward.

SquarePeg · Mar 25, 2016

Wasp1 said:
SquarePeg that is exactly what I am talking about. Not just doing a whole sale cull of all images.
Family shots are never on the list unless they are so bad as not knowing who is who in the shot.
But I have got a heap of more than doubles of landscape shots and I will be doing what you have just said.
At the same time I am making a folder called portfolio not that I am going to try to sell them but for me to go to the shots that mean the most to me for what ever reason.
Not sure how you take your shot but I'm thinking its like me take a heap and think I can fix that one up a little later. The later becomes like a year or so. If this is the case they are going, as I am always adding to the folders.

Yes I was keeping everything, even the duds and duplicates plus I was shooting RAW + JPEG so had multiple everything. I've since switched to just RAW as I don't really have a need for the JPEGs unless I'm traveling and want to view on my tablet which is a pita to view RAW files but easy to view JPEG. For landscape and flower shots I tend to overshoot taking several of each view at various DOF and exposures, experimenting with different angles and focal lengths since I'm still working on my composition skills. I delete the very obvious misses in camera before I download the shots but, for me, it's difficult to tell if focus is dead on or dof is what I wanted until I see it on my big monitor. Really if I take 20 shots of a flower and plan on sharing only 1 or 2 of my favorites, there is no reason to keep the rest.

The_Traveler · Mar 25, 2016

One of the factors that occurrs to me now as I look at older shots is that I am a much better (and smarter) editor now and shots that were so so before can actually be made to look decent now.
5 years ago

edited now. Not a great shot but better.

table1349 · Mar 25, 2016

I have almost 40 years of negatives. A file cabinet doesn't take up that much space and I could fit an entire server with Petabytes of space into the area a single file cabinet takes up.

Wasp1 · Mar 25, 2016

Just last night I get rid of 4 folders. One had over 100 shots of the moon.
I have got more than 200 with the new camera and the 600mm lens. And these ones are a country mile better than the old ones. They to me are utterly bad shots and don't deserve to be kept at all. Though they got me to a point in time when they were good.
Folder 2 had a heap of flower photo's and I have got the tree's on which these flowers have grown on in my backyard. So I have the chance to retake them and make them look much better.
Folder 3 had landscape shots which were blurred due to no tripod and I have taken them all again in the last couple of trips back to were they were taken. But not that we made a trip to there to do them we had to visit family. So I got them again, yes some will never be exactly the same but I can live with that.
Folder 4 had some real bad bird shots in it. Some of them are from my area while others were from other places. But not to make a big point of it they were no good.
I now see no reason to keep each and every shot I take. It doesn't cost me anything to take them or delete them. Its what I want to do and I think its the best thing to do. If you want to keep all your shots then this is up to you and you should do as you want to. But to try say you don't understand why is a fair question as is the question on why keep all of them when you more than likely know some are just no good.
Culling going by what has been said here is a personal thing as is what we like to take shots of. But we all should respect other peoples ways even if you disagree with them. It doen't make you right or wrong. It just make us different.