Do you delete your old photos?

[vintagesnaps]

I delete shots with shutter blur, movement blur, etc. If I'm using my digital Ricoh which is DNG. Shooting film I keep my negatives.

 

[PhotoHobbyist113 139]

When I first review pics taken, I delete 95% of them. Those left are worth keeping and I never delete them.

 

[21limited]

Feb. 2015 I got an image (well about 10 images) of barred owl near my feeders, probably hunting mice. It’s almost dark, the camera focuses poorly and the high ISO causes noise.

I got this image.
20150-02-11-Barred-Owl-1 by Norm Head, on Flickr

8 years later I get a subscription to topaz and cleaned it up.

20150-02-11-Barred-Owl-1 by Norm Head, on Flickr


The cool thing with these two images on flickr, is if you toggle back and forth between the two images, you can see the change instantly.

One of this series got close to 200 likes on facebook in it’s original form… but it looked sharper at reduced size. I always wished the image was better, so I kept it, even though it was soft. 20 years earlier a friend shot a wedding, and somehow the AF was turned off and he didn’t realize it until after the wedding, He went on line and found some software that saved the shoot. I remembered that, and I’ve been saving soft but almost useable images ever since. Right now I’m going through over 100,000 files looking for the ones I left behind that could now be worth resurecting. Starting form the year 2000, I’ve been upgrading images, the early ones need expanding in Gigapixel. The newer ones need sharpining. I’m up to 2015, and still have at least 50,000 image to go through..

SOme of my favourite “saves” (keep in mid, the earleist of these on th *ist and possibly the K100D were 6 MP files, 3,000x2,000.

Caribou on the Slate Islands in North Ontario. July 20, 2008 (Pentax K100D and SIgma 70-300)
Woodland-Caribou by Norm Head, on Flickr

May 17-2008 K100D
13 Getting closer, better have a hug by Norm Head, on Flickr

Painted Turtles - June 2004 - Pentax *ist D, SIgma 70-300)
2004-06-01-Painted_turtles-S by Norm Head, on Flickr

JUne 2010 PentaxK20D-
K20D7689-SF-PTD-S by Norm Head, on Flickr

July 17 , 2006
2006_Storm_rail_8x10-GD by Norm Head, on Flickr

I’ve probably rescued 100 photos I would have tossed if I were quicker on the “delete” button in the original PP work.

 

[SunriseAvenue]

I try to do the most of the culling when I look through the photos right after I got home. Sometimes I go back to some older works and delete stuff as well, but usually I'm keeping everything I've decided to keep the first time. I like making smartshow 3d slideshow with my pictures to look through them in a form of a video and I see visible mistakes here and there (especially if it's been years since the picture was taken) but I don't delete these images, they remind me of my progress.

 

[greybeard31 4]

No, only duplicates

 

[AlanKlein79 18]

Print and gift family shots to the subjects, now. Or make up slide show on memory cards of special family occasions. They'll love you for it now. No one's going to hug you after you're dead. The rest of your pictures, no one's going to look at when you're gone.

 

[Light Fandango]

My workflow:
1. I shoot RAW, plus Jpeg for quick review on the TV. I do a rough edit as I shoot, time permitting.
2. At home, I go through RAWs, culling out anything not up to snuff, and in some cases doing a bit of RAW editing. Then the RAWs get turned into full-size Tiffs for main picture editing.
3. In one file, with name/month/year, the RAWs get put on 3 identical harddrives, as do the Tiffs.
The final Tiffs also get sent to the small server in the closet for easy access on the TV or the PCs.
4. The Jpegs get deleted as they have served their viewing purpose. I can always make more from the final Tiffs if I need any.

I find that culling early and often keeps the workflow sane and manageable, and I am ruthless about what goes. The result is a fairly compact collection with few "almost-good" pictures to wade through.

It still adds up to a heck of a lot of Gigabytes, though. I keep hearing people talk about storage being "cheap" and then I look at what I have spent on WD Red drives and wonder what deal I am missing...

C

 

[MikeTZ]

Storage *is* cheap.

I use external USB drives, one travels with me, one stays home, and I can fit 18 months of raw+jpg images on a HD. When it fills up, I store it away and buy a new one.

But for me, that is probably overkill. After the shoot, I cherry pick the good images and never look at the rest again. But if you are the kind of person who loves editing, then you may get the urge to revisit them, but not me.

But these days I find myself shooting far less than I used to, so a modern 5TB drive will last me several years.

 

[Don Fischer]

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.

Never though much about that. I keep the photo's I like only. Going back like that sounds like a good way to tell how far you've actually come I'd think.

 

[Thiophilos]

I cull about three quarters of what I shoot, then share a few out of the ones that remain. That leaves the un-shared ones in purgatory. I keep those and sometimes go back to them for photo-mining. With better editing skills and better software, some of those can become winners.

But yeah, some of those eventually get deleted. Selecting them for deletion is hard work, and it is often easier to just leave them.

 

[Dikkie]

Yes I do.

I had a IG account for some kind of photo blogging, and some posts became totally irrelevant.
Or for some posts I changed my mind later on. People evolve, and their thought about a photo too.
For some photos on location, I do a revisit and shoot it again. I then notice that the shot from 10 years ago is sometimes worthless as my photoskills became better over time.
For some photos I prefer to keep them even if they're ugly, for 'historic' reasons I document space, to see how places were long time ago.

And since Flickr once published that the free account was only possible up to 1000 photos. I went through them to clean it up, make space!
Some pictures I prefer to keep on Flickr even if they're not good, just because I can find them very quickly on Flickr. Their way of tagging and categorizing is handy.
It's not the way I do it to store it on my personal hard drive.

 

[RScottie112 26]

So far I have only deleted the really bad shots.

These can be anything from having the settings way off, being totally out of focus, or the shot of my shoes as I accidentally hit the button as I am fidgeting with my camera.

All of my shots are kept on the card they were initially taken on. They are also copied to my laptop.

I know this is not a good way to insure having them forever so I have been looking at redundant NAS options along with USB Hard Drives.

 

[tinytmp]

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 photo, and even while visiting a Boca Raton dermatology office, I realize 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.

It’s generally good practice to sort through old photos. Deleting truly meaningless or poorly taken shots helps keep your library organized and saves space, while keeping photos with potential or sentimental value allows you to rediscover or repurpose them later.

 

[1981eagle]

I delete some ... it all depends on the subject.
A lot of my digital images were given to me on disc from my father. In the years before he passed away he scanned boxes and boxes of slides and burned them to DVD's that he then gave to my brothers and me.
When it comes to people/extended family - if I have no idea who they are - I usually just leave them on the disc and I'll likely never look at them again - so, to me that is as good as deleting them.

Photos I've taken, I delete ones that are poorly composed or have flaws such as being out of focus or have a terrible exposure.

If I take multiple views or exposures of the same thing, and it's not something 'special to me' I will typically delete all but a couple of them.

 

[misterjones114 128]

Its pretty rare that I delete pics, even the obviously bad ones.