What do you do with your pictures?

Torus34

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[Background: with rare exceptions*, I make pictures for the sole purpose of display on the walls of my home. I have limited wall space. The vast majority of the pictures I take do not 'make the cut', as it were. Those that don't are discarded, either through scrapping the negatives or erasing the 'puter data. Only those pictures that make it to the printing, matting & framing stage are retained. My files, hard and digital, are thus very small and easily maintained.]

Some of you, based on the posts, take many, many pictures.

What do you do with all of them? Do you keep those that you'll never use?

*You know, stuff like the series I'm shooting to document a granddaughter's T-ball team this season. These will be CD'ed to the parents at season's end. One CD copy will be retained by me.
 
I have two back up hard drives that I store all my pictures on. After each shoot I will go through and scrap the really really awful ones, but the majority I keep. If you shoot solely in raw the hard drives can fill up fast, but they are so cheap now...
 
99% do not get printed, I enjoy them on DVDs in movies that I make or on computer screens or slideshows.
 
After editting them they all go on a hard drive and 2x a year get backed up to DVD's
 
I use them for my web sites.

On my web sites I document mostly the Mojave Desert- Including geology, national parks and forests, historical points of interest such as gold mines, ghost towns and whatever else I can think of like wilderness areas, plants, wildlife, etc... A photo archive and reference site with 150-200k visitors each month.

These photos are used for books, presentations, etc.

I'm also developing my fine art by preparing prints for exhibits and competitions and working with various local and regional venues to sell them. Also one of my web sites is exclusively being developed to sell prints.

There's some cool stuff I have planned in the future.

One application for my photos is developing a web site for a client virtually touring a 62 mile long scenic highway through the mountains in a local national forest. The highway is re-opening today and will make a nice project through the hot days of this summer.

I delete the few stinkers, but try to catalog everything else.
 
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I've found I'm a photo Pack Rat. I keep everything for some reason as if I may be able to do something with it one day. Generally if a photo is going to get deleted it will be right after the exposure and still on the camera. Once I transfer it onto my HD I usually find I never can get myself to delete them. Maybe im just being lazy. But I still have a ton of room on my laptop and my external so I'm not worried about that just yet.
 
I've found I'm a photo Pack Rat. I keep everything for some reason

That will change fast once you get a couple of terrabytes of files accumulated. I *never* delete in camera. What looks terrible on the LCD maybe a special important moment that is nowhere near that bad or is salvageable in post.

I import, cull, delete during this event and post process. Then once the photo is done, I copy it to a temp area on my SAN, where once a month everything that is in this folder, is placed on DVD, locked and stored in a fire-proof safe. I have a 40TB SAN in my basement, and even with that much room... it builds fast. If I decide to turn pro at some point, I will also be adding the process of copying all my "completed" files to 1 or 2TB hard drives and placed in waterproof cases, but that will be for business files only.
 
lol 40 TB? how much of that do you even use?
 
At the moment they live on my computer harddrive and a backup harddrive (only 500GB backup - not at Jerry levels yet ;))
From there they exist on my blog, flickr account, forums and some get all the way to my computer screen background (its currently a sheep --- methinks I might need to change that soon). I don't do much/any printing, but mostly as I still have to work this out and get results that I am happy with - part of which is understanding just how good a print really is to look at at different sizes and such. I will get there (my walls need some decoration - even though 2 of them are sloping inwards (attic)) but I am not busting myself yet.

Heck beyond only home use I have considered making up some shots into frames and then selling those and holding an exhibition - all plans and dreams for the future but they will all happen oneday
 
i rarely delete. i only delete on camera, pictures i know i screwed up... such as taking a shot of my foot on accident. or someone stepping into the frame. i save everything as if i needed it for some reason. as others, only about 1% if that get printed.
There are 4 places i keep my photos
1. i copy the camera card to an import directory on my laptop (250GB)
2. i do a one touch backup on my NAS (1TBx2 mirrored)
3. i run a nightly backup from my laptop to a WB Mirror edition external (1TBx2 mirrored)
4. i also copy from my imported directory to a post processing and print directory.
the post processing directory contains all my photoshop files and original copies that intend to publish to web, share with friends or print. and the print directory contains the final copy of my photos that "made the cut".

and JerryPH, a cheap 40TB SAN would cost $250K+ how do you justify that cost? plus there's so much maintenance involved where do you find the time?
 
Well, it much depends... many get stored away and never looked back at... and true (sad) fact is that no one misses them the least bit, not even myself. I have so far even stored photos that I'd call bloopers today, fun we had when the first digital camera in my hands was all new and everyone had a play with it. I now wonder why ever I stored those and didn't shred them... and might still do so, if that weren't so much work.

Those that I take on commission get stored on DVD and sold.
Holiday photos get stored on DVD and kept as holiday photos, labelled and all.

I do have a blog, no site of my own, though, and COULD post some there but hardly ever do. Am still stuck with posting pics from Turkey, that was last year on October! :roll:

You here on TPF used to get some of my photos to see but now no more, I'm afraid...
 
must say on my Canon camera I always try to avoid deleting whilst I am out shooting - the delete one photo and delete all icons are right next to each other in the delete menu - and if I make a habbit of it I just know that oneday (one cold day when my fingers are half numb and shaking and just after I grab my best shot ever) my finger will slip and I will delete the lot!! :(

LaPhoto how about we have a Blog Race - I am only just in November of last year myself!
 
Since I've slowed down on the art festivals, my production has slowed in kind. There was a time when I was shooting, developing and printing for the purpose of mat & bagging for a show bin, but not these days. I'm more like you, Jim, it's gotten more for personal use or stuff for the occasional workshop. :)

I file all my negatives in acid free sheets and binders, labeled and dated. I can find things easily and review the negs easily if I want something.
 
I usually delete at least 95% of my photos, so I never have a problem with lack of space.

It's fun to stick 'em up all around your room, cubicle, car, etc.
 

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