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creative, gear, image management, image workflow, lightroom, photo, photography, photography tip, photography tips
If this were in fact a sin, you may as well imagine me a resident of the 9th circle of hell. I have done this every time I took off the lens cap since I took up photography two years ago, but I am beginning to repent of my ways, and here’s why.
When I look at my photo catalog in Lightroom, I am tempted to think, “Wow, I am a really good photographer”, but this catalog is extremely misleading. Since I have deleted all of my photos that look “bad”, either during the editing process, or in the field I have no way of really seeing what skills I need to improve upon, and I have a skewed perspective on my growth as a photographer.
If you don’t delete your photos you will be able to see how just how many misses you have each shoot. You can easily pick out trends in your photography. Are your missed photos mostly out of focus, or are you constantly under-exposing your images? Just a quick run through your catalog of images taken over the last month will be able to tell you what area of your photography you need to practice up on.
On a sidenote, if you use a program like Adobe Lightroom 3, you will be able to quickly see if you are getting stuck on a particular aperture or shutter speed since it is so easy to access your metadata with that program. I know that when I look back on my catalog during the time right after I bought my 50mm f/1.8, I shot every frame on f/1.8! I am sure I missed out on a lot of great photos by being reigned into that one aperture.
So from now on, I vow to never delete any more photos. I have plenty of room for all of them and they don’t cost me anything to keep.
Do you find that you are a deleter or a keeper? How do you think this has effected your photography? Leave a comment and let me know! Thanks and I’ll see you again on Friday.
Michael Rich Blog 
Because I’ve kept the amateur trick of taking as many pictures as possible in hopes of getting a few great shots, I’m a delete button addict. Never thought of it from this perspective–but it makes total sense to keep some of those FAIL shots as a teaching tool.
I learned something new. Cool.
And thanks!
Hey, thanks for the comment 🙂 Glad to help
I shoot in RAW+JPEG and in one good day I can amass more than 10GBs of images. It isn’t that none of them come out well, just that many of them are duplicates, I shoot alot of bursts when shooting wild life, and birds so naturally there is some camera sway, and plenty of pretty much the same photos. Delete. When I am shooting in unfamilar light I use braketing. To give me an idea where to start, thats three images that I don’t need any more, and if I shoot several or all in brackets then, I know that only one is going to come out.
You make a good point about seeing where you made the mistake, how about taking photos that don’t really have as much impact as you want. I have found myself separating out the quality photos from the clich’e and on second thought I don’t think so. The photos that don’t make it go into an art pile where I attempt to make more arty retro lomographs, or other kinds of photo art.
In the end I’m always left with plenty to get rid of.
SIncerely,
Tobias Mann
Hey Tobias,
I understand and agree with your point. If you are shooting in burst mode and bracketing 5+ exposures, I think I am okay with deleting those images that are duplicates. It’s more about keeping those photos you aren’t happy with and learning about why you aren’t happy with them.
I think I might just have a happy trigger finger. This post was pretty interesting. I’m glad you brought this up, and even though two good counter points were pointed out I think that your article is specific enough to make them mute.
Totally a deleter! Prolly cause I’m a perfectionist sometimes, and i get tunnel visioned wanting just one certain effect. As a result I’ve definitely deleted a lot of pics that were really good in other aspects.
That is another good reason to not delete photos that I didn’t even think of as I was writing this article. I am sure I have tossed many great photos due to “tunnel vision”. Thanks for the comment!
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I keep all of them and call them art 🙂 jk
I kind of fell into a system of saving most for about a year and then deleting a bunch of them. But I never get rid off all of the so-so ones. I hate computer work and so I find I let them build up in the summer and then during our warm Edmonton winters I have more time to sort through them.
I don’t enjoy editing as much as taking photos either. I find it easiest to work on photos the same day that I shoot them. I am not sure why, it just works best that way for me.