Do you delete your old photos?

[nerwin]

I'm sure some of us go back and look at photos we took 10 or more years ago and have you come across a photo...for an example of a flower or whatever it may be that was poorly taken and just delete it? Is it good practice to go back and sort through your old work? or do you just keep everything?

I'm just curious what everyone's thoughts are on this.

I've always tried to refrain from deleting photos I've taken recently because I might go back months or years later and rediscover a good photos but there is a point when a photo I took of nothing and doesn't mean anything to me, I usually delete it to save space and keep things organized.

 

[adamhiram]

Great question! As usual, I have an overcomplicated multi-part response. In general, no.

• No - For a long time, I shot in raw+jpg so I would always have a jpg version of every photo available, even if I didn't get around to editing it. At some point, I stopped doing this because I absolutely never needed the jpg. I went back to delete these files by the thousands, and saved very little space in the grand scheme of things. It just wasn't worth the effort.
• No - For anything that had any meaning as a memory, even if the photos aren't great, or if I never got around to culling and editing them, I hold onto hope that one day I will.
• No - For anything related to people, family, my house, yard, garden, I like to have some sort of historic record of what people and things looked like then. It's amazing how many times I have wanted to know "did that wall in the basement always look like that", or "when did I plant those trees", or "what so-and-so at that event". The answer is often in throw-away photos that I would have otherwise deleted.

So in short, no, I rarely delete anything.

 

[Original katomi]

Yes/no
i look back at the old hdd in this case 2022 and if an image does not invoke a feeling or memory.... then it’s gone
just to clarify
I used a external hdd for even years and another for old years, so now I have packed away 2023 drive reviewing 2022’s
storange plan
pc
3 ex HD’s grand father, father, son system
one is stored off site.

 

[Jeff15]

Its a no from me....

 

[wobe]

I delete photos when I review them at the time they are taken.

If I wanted to keep them originally then I will want to keep them after that time as well, of course I am talking as an amateur not professional so all my photos are of personal interest to me.

 

[cdd29]

I will cull and archive what I keep after a year or so with some exceptions (ex: places I will probably never go to again, so I'll keep most everything.) Drive space is fairly cheap.

 

[smoke665]

Yes and no. I delete the worst on the first cull, but some of the remainder don't make it to final edit. I keep those in case I need to use part of an image later. After about 6 months they go to a secondary HD. Eventually I'll weed out those extras.

 

[jeffashman]

For the most part, no. If I come across something that just really sucks, then I might delete it, but in most cases, no.

 

[webestang64]

I do not delete anything because film is forever......LOL

But yes, sometimes I do delete some of my color film scans depending on needs/wants. Of course I have the option of just scanning the film again. But like others have said storage drives are very reasonable in price so if I went digital I would most likely keep it all.

 

[joelbolden]

I create two files, one digital and one film, that are seasonal, i.e. Winter/Spring 2024 etc that I save pics I want to keep, everything else gets deleted. At the end of a "season" I dump those files to a DVD-R which gets labelled and I keep adding to until it's full. They can be jpeg or DNG(mainly this). I don't store on PS, LR, Affinity2, Cloud, Dropbox etc.

 

[Rickbb]

No for me as well, even my old slides and negs. I will get around to sorting and cataloging them someday, (I hope).

 

[CherylL]

I have photos by year and in that folder separate folders per event with date and description. Each year I do consolidate all the dog photos in one folder, the Watershed has one folder, backyard one folder per year. Everything else is by events.

I don't delete anything until I am finished editing an event. Sometimes I need those extra raw files to grab a child's smile or do an eye swap for glasses glare.

After I edit all the photos in the set I wait about a week or a few months and go back and delete the raw folder, the .psd folder and the .jpg for web. I only keep the .jpg full size per event.

I was keeping all the raw and .psd files, but that was taking up way too much space. About every 3 months I go back and delete those folders.

I have 2 externals just for storage. I add periodically to them keeping one off site. I shoot video too and that adds up. I then delete off of my D drive those that I copied to storage. I have 2 more externals just for backups and keep one off site.

I screen shot and printed of my filing tree to keep with the storage externals. Screen shot my current folders on my D drive. I went over it all with my daughter and her eyes glazed over. I doubt she will want any of my raw files.

 

[Original katomi]

sadly Its something I have seen all to often
When clearing a house/ home of an older person
Non of the family wants any of the old photos. It use to sadden me that the old person had collected all this family history ( normally as the family grew) and no one cared

 

[The Barbarian]

No for me as well, even my old slides and negs. I will get around to sorting and cataloging them someday, (I hope).

I started digitizing all my old photos from slides, negatives, prints, etc. Took over a year, and I had a pretty good workflow system. I sent thousands of family shots over five generations, to my kids on flash drives. I had no idea how much they'd like it. I have a portable SSD on my main computer, into which I place pictures I think are worth saving, broken into different files. Not done with that, yet.

 

[Strodav]

No. I dump my mem cards to a raw image 4TB internal drive, which is backed up to an external drive on a regular basis. I import into LrC from the raw image drive. I create a dng backup to an internal 2TB SSD working image drive for the images I import into LrC. I regularly backup this drive to an external drive. I export processed images to the C: drive for those I plan to post to social media. So, I have all the images I capture, create a backup of the ones I plan to process.

As Post Processing software got better, I was able to rescue flawed images (soft, subject motion, ...) that I originally passed up. With AI, I might be able to rescue more.