Percentage of shots you keep?

[ccaetano]

Hello,
I keep everything but I PP just a couple from each shoot. Sometimes I work on photo-montages and go back to see if I can use any component of older images, as a cloudy sky, a grass field, or some object. I never know if that less good photo can be useful in the future.

 

[tsaraleksi]

I keep everything that could be usable, generally only tossing the stuff that is blurry or has no value (back of someone's head, etc). So that's probably 95% or so. Of that 95%, the number I generate as final processed images varies by shoot and by end purpose-- sometimes I only wanted a single, or several, frames-- in that case it'll be a very low number, but sometimes I want everything that passes the minimum standards for quality, etc, in which case it might be as high as 50-70%.

 

[GeneralBenson]

It depends on what I'm shooting for. When I'm shooting for fun, I'll experiment a lot or shoot extras just because. When I'm shooting or something specific, I would say I aim for about 50%. But I think it's not that important to think about. Being able to nail a shot in 2-3 exposures is a great skill to have, but it doesn't mean only take 3 shots. Likewise, just because you take 10 shots of something, and only keep 1, doesn't mean the other 9 were bad. Even if you've already nailed the the shot, nail it more; especially with people or animals or anythings that move in the shot. When you go back and look at them, I'm sure they're all acceptable and technically good, but I bet one will stand out as better. The goal of being able to get a shot right in less frames isn't necessarily to shoot less frames, but to have more good shots to choose from.

 

[sabbath999]

I have absolutely no idea.

I keep the good ones and trash the rest.

I took over 30,000 pictures last year, and posted over 10,000 to their various project files so I guess that I would be about 1/3 of them keepers. I do a lot of animal stuff, so I will shoot 5 with the same composition and keep the one with the best expression... the rest of them get the trash. If there are two or three that are good, I will generally keep all of em.

Why on earth would I want to look back over 20,000 pictures that weren't good enough to make the cut?

 

[Captain IK]

WOW!
I'm surprised at how many of you keep all your shots. Storage is one thing and is fairly easy to deal with, but cataloging and sorting through potentially thousands of shots to find a few good ones seems to me to be a daunting task.

 

[Captain IK]

I have absolutely no idea.



Why on earth would I want to look back over 20,000 pictures that weren't good enough to make the cut?

I agree

 

[SrBiscuit]

i guess it's all relative to how many shots you take...i guess if i shot 30,000 in a year, i would def opt to trash some...but if im only taking 5k a year...or less...keeping most of them doesnt really matter.

and in thinking more about it, i do go back and dump the ones i really dont see myself ever using...

 

[tsaraleksi]

WOW!
I'm surprised at how many of you keep all your shots. Storage is one thing and is fairly easy to deal with, but cataloging and sorting through potentially thousands of shots to find a few good ones seems to me to be a daunting task.

If you keep your shoots well organized (by date / title) then it should not be difficult to look back and find what you're looking for.

I probably have 250,000+ image files, but everything that is under my current organization regime I can find in just a few minutes.

 

[fiveoboy01]

I too, while not using them, keep all (or most) of my photos at least saved on my computer. That being said, I only ever put my 'best' on flickr. This turns out to be around 1-2/10, mostly because I take 3-4 photos of a subject, then choose the best angle or two from those. I like to look back over the ones I didnt use and sometimes I see potential where before I saw none, and its also a learning experience.

Edit: Just to make it easy I keep about 90%, only show about 8%.

That's sort of what I do.

I host my "better"(that's a relative term haha) photos on Smugmug and keep all the others on the hard drive. If the photo is bad quality, out of focus or composed wrong, I delete it.

Yesterday I took about 500 photos at an R/C racetrack. I inadvertently set the ISO to 3200 and well the D60 does not have good high-ISO performance, so about half of those automatically went into the trash. I got about 15-20 real good ones out of what was left.

Of course if I'd had a faster lens I think my percentage would have gone up too. Indoor lighting blows.

 

[Overread19 7]

30000shots a year - my 400D would not last 2 years before expected shutter death

as for organising each time I come back from a trip those shots get put into their own labled folder and since most of my shooting is specific trips out I can lable each folder with content/destination.

 

[GeneralBenson]

When I started, I used to keep anything. Then I got better, and went through it all, and realized how much was totally useless. Then I got better, went through it all, and realized how much was useless. And so on. As you improve, you'll realize the sort of thing that has no purpose and never will.

 

[Captain IK]

Maybe I should rephrase the original question and ask what percentage of your shots to you actually use.
Personally saving thousands of "so so" photographs, just in case one of them MIGHT be useful some day seems to be a tremendous waste of effort.

 

[rufus5150]

I'm not sure there's much effort involved. Some day, I'll probably start ditching them, but it's far more effort to delete than not. It just takes up drive space and drive space is cheap. If you compare how many hours it would take to go through photos at my normal day job rate, the drives and lazily dropping files on them seems to pale in comparison.

I don't necessarily save them because they might be useful though I like to go back through and figure out what I did right or wrong. Most of them are snapshot quality or better and are good for the memories.

But to your original question 10% on average with some shoots going much higher.

 

[chadsdphoto]

This discussion reminds me of something National Geographic photographer Jim Stanfield told me once - "Throw away the bad ones."

I'm a pro shooter for the South Dakota Department of Tourism, so may shoot more at a single event than some of you. For instance, last Saturday I was at a ski/snowboard racing event. I didn't pay attention to how many pictures I actually took, but after going through and tossing the out-of-focus and incorrect exposure shots, I still have 364 possible "good ones." I'm going to take a guess that there were over 1,000 or so total shots to begin with.

Yes, that's one of the secrets of pro shooters that Stanfield was getting at - we shoot out-of-foucs and bad exposures all the time. We just don't let you see them.

I completely agree that for a lot of people the storage space isn't an issue, but when you want to go back and find something why would you want to look through the blurry shot of your feet, etc. from when you bumped the shutter button getting up from a kneeling position?

Toss that bad stuff and you're overall collection will start to look better. And edit ruthlessly!

I understand those of you who say that you go back and try to make your "okay" shots better in Photoshop later. If that's what you want to do, fine. For me the picture-taking process is the fun part, not the sitting at the computer, so I'd rather go shoot more than to try to save something that didn't work the first time. Just my way, though.

Have fun out there!

 

[Phranquey]

Maybe I should rephrase the original question and ask what percentage of your shots to you actually use.
Personally saving thousands of "so so" photographs, just in case one of them MIGHT be useful some day seems to be a tremendous waste of effort.

:thumbup:

I keep maybe 5% to 10% of my shots, mainly because I do a lot of bracketing, pick the best of the lot, and trash the rest. After 22 years of shooting, you can go back and note your progress even through your keepers. The funny thing is, I have gone back a few years, looked at what I thought was a keeper, cringed, and moved on. These I don't delete, though, since I did like them at one time...... they are a good notation of your progress.

The only time I really hang on to a crappy pic is for the bird collection, and that's if it's the only photograph I have of a particular species. I can at least say I got a picture of it, although it may have been a 1/4 mile away...as long as it's idetifiable. As I get better shots later, I will delete the bad ones that wouldn't get used. Saving 20 to 40 pictures of the same Hawk, in close to the same pose, on the same branch....way to much hassle to dig back through hundreds (if not thousands) of photos of one species to try and find that one nice shot I was wanting to grab.....pick the best and then trash 'em.