Sometimes Deleting Can Be Good: The Concept of Culling in Digital Photography

[Jason Dunn]

<p>Answer me this my fellow digital photographers: when you come back from shooting a bunch of photos with your camera, do you keep them all? Or do you delete some of them? I'm not talking about the blurry ones, or the ones that are too dark to be rescued. I'm asking if you delete photos that turned out well. Does the thought of that scare you? Do you believe that the real benefit of digital photography is the ability to shoot as many pictures as you want of the same thing, and keep them all? Then this article is for you.</p><p>I love digital photography. Prior to going digital, I wasn't very interested in photography. I was enchanted by the idea of photography; capturing memories and images, but I was less enthused about the costs, and the limitations of never knowing if that shot you took actually turned out until after you developed it. I became more interested in photography in college, after having purchased a 35mm Canon Rebel for a photography class, and enjoying the feel of a camera really meant for taking pictures. As I moved to digital after getting a <a>Kodak DC265</a> in 1999, I realized that the rules had definitely changed. It's taken me a few years to develop a system of working with digital images that works for me, and I hope to share part of that system with you today.</p><h1><strong>The Importance of Culling</strong></h1><p>I think you should get in the habit of deleting "good" photos, and here's why: I believe that deleting/culling photos is an important part of learning how to be a better photographer. The word <a>culling</a> has its genesis in ranching, but the idea is a good one: separating the weak from the strong, for the purpose of making the remainder even stronger. It has powerful implications for digital photography.</p><p>If you snap five pictures of a scene, odds are that only <em>one</em> of those images captures the moment better than all the others. Often it's hard to make the judgement if they're really close - I often have to do A/B comparisons of photos several times before I pick the one that has the most impact. Looking at your images and comparing them helps you learn what makes a photo great. Sometimes it's the small details of a photo that make it better, while other times one photo is just technically better than another one - better exposure, a better angle, or better composition. There are exceptions to this rule of course - often times, especially with photos of human/animal subjects shot in rapid succession, you can capture spontaneous moments and the entire series of photos tells the story.</p><p>It's my belief that keeping five nearly identical photos foster a pack-rat mentality that holds a photographer back from improving. If you keep all your images, you never have to think about why one is better than the other. That means you never have to look critically at your own photography and learn what types of photos you should be striving for when you bring that camera up to your eye and press the shutter release.</p><p>Back in my analog days of photography, I went on a vacation to Arizona. Never having been there, I was enchanted by the vivid colours - the red rocks, the yellow desert, the vivid sunsets. During the week I was there, I shot around 12 rolls of 36 exposure film. Returning home, I got it all developed, and requested doubles for good measure. It was a hefty developing bill! When I started looking through my images, I was stunned to realize that I had taken so many images of the same thing. After ten photos of <a>cacti</a> and twenty photos of red rocks, they all start to look the same. I was disappointed in myself for not only trying for more variety in my photography, but more so for not realizing what a waste of money and film it was to take so many pictures of the same thing. Now that we're in the digital world the waste isn't in money and film, it's in hard drive space, and collections of memories that are bloated by too many photos. Having a collection of 20,000 digital photos isn't a good thing if 15,000 of them are near-duplicates of the other 5,000.</p><p><PAGE /></p><h1><strong>The Concept in Practice</strong></h1><p>When I'm out shooting with my DSLR, I'll typically snap a minimum of two or three images of almost everything. I'll vary the angle slightly with each photo, zoom in less/more, maybe fiddle with a setting here and there, but all the photos will be very similar. When I return to my PC to dump the images to the hard drive, that's when the process begins. I view my JPEG images (I haven't made the jump to RAW yet, that's another story) using <a>ACDSEE</a> because it allows me to view in full screen, without any toolbars or distractions, and because it's blisteringly fast at rendering large images.</p><p>The first pass I make is to delete the obviously bad photos. These are the photos where, the second you see them, you know they need to be deleted. Photos that are significantly out of focus, too dark to salvage with software exposure adjustments, and images that are just plain badly shot.</p><p>For the second pass, I'll go through and start looking at the images that are redundant. This is where culling comes into effect. Which is the best photo out of those four I took of the same subject? Which photo best represents the memory of what I saw? I delete any photos that don't represent the best of the set.</p><p>My third, and usually final pass, is the comparison of all photos in the set. This means I compare photos of the same type shot at different times. This is also the pass where I'll decide which images need to be adjusted, and which will benefit the most from it. So, on a recent vacation, I shot around 20 photos of the beach at different times, on different days, and from different angles. Do I really need 20 photos of the same beach to remind of me of what it looked like 30 years from now? No, I do not. I set about comparing all the images, and got the number down to around five images that represented different parts of the beach, showing different things (sand, waves, the sun setting, etc.). <strong></strong></p><h1><strong>Tell Great Stories with Your Photos</strong></h1><p>I believe that photos tell a story, and in the same way that a good story doesn't repeat the same thing over and over, having near-duplicates of the same image is equally useless. I like to cull my images until I feel the story is as tight and powerful as possible. Great stories have impact, and so should your photos.</p><p>On a recent trip to Mexico I shot around 1200 images in total, but by the time I had my final cut of images, I was down to 290. That's still a lot of photos for a one-week vacation, but I feel it tells the story of our vacation in a manner that shares the depth of our experience without making for a boring story. Would I show someone 290 photos of my vacation? Not at all. When I've shown photos to our friends and family, I do a "highlights" version and pull 40-60 images. The images that best represent the experiences we had are the ones that get shown. Coming up with a highlights reel is much simpler when you have a strong set of images to start from.</p><p>Here's an experiment: go back to some of your earliest digital photos, and browse through them. How is the story that your images tell you? Is there a lot of repetition, or does it flow from one memory to the next? Sometimes culling is made easier years after the fact - I know I've gone back on older photo shoots and hindsight allows for a much clearer vision of which memories are important and which are just taking up space. Give it a try.</p><p>Do you cull your images? Or are you a digital pack rat? I'm very interested in hearing opinions from other digital photographers on this subject, so if you have an opinion, share it!</p><p><em>Jason Dunn owns and operates <a href="http://www.thoughtsmedia.com/" target="_blank">Thoughts Media Inc.</a>, a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys <a href="http://photos.jasondunn.com/" target="_blank">photography</a>, mobile devices, <a href="http://www.jasondunn.com/" target="_blank">blogging</a>, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, his wonderful son, and his sometimes obedient dog. He continues to cull his photos.</em></p><p><em></em><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com//ppct/auto/1240336793.usr1.gif" /></p><p><strong>Do you enjoy using new hardware, software and accessories, then sharing your experience with others? Then join us on the <a href="http://www.thoughtsmedia.com/reviewteam.php" target="_blank">Thoughts Media Review Team</a>! We're looking for individuals who find it fun to test new gear and give their honest opinions about the experience. It's a volunteer role with some great perks. Interested? <a href="http://www.thoughtsmedia.com/reviewteam.php" target="_blank">Then click here for more information.</a></strong></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com//ppct/auto/1240336793.usr1.gif" /></p><p>&nbsp;</p>

[Chris Gohlke]

My name is Chris and I have a problem. I rarely delete photos. But, let me defend myself. Why delete? I'll use this gallery as an example:

http://chrisgohlke.smugmug.com/gallery/1193571

Some of the pictures are completely horrible and should be deleted because they don't add anything to the story to the viewer(they do get better on the later pages of the gallery). But, to my wife and I, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, so I figured keep everything. When my wife and I look at pictures, even if it is a bad picture, there might be a subtle detail that brings back a laugh or an additional memory that none of the other photos might.

I found this same issue with our wedding photos. A few years after our wedding, I purchased the complete set of negatives from the photographer and had prints made of everything. Even though some of the additional pictures were not very good (which is why he left them out from our original set), there were little details in these that were not in the others which again served to key additional memories of the event.

So, since storage is essentially free, why not keep everything. Sure, if you are putting an album together, hand pick the best. And yes, I do plan on doing just that in my smugmug account, right now I am in the process of loading everything, but I will go back eventually and make the full galleries private and then make a highlights gallery of just the good stuff. Of course then people might think I am a better photographer than I acutally am.

[Damion Chaplin]

I am definitely a packrat. I agree with Chris, since storage space is so cheap, why not keep them all? So I do.

However, I also have a culling process: It's called printing. When you take 3-4 shots of each picture (pictures of each shot?), you learn real quick that you won't be printing all of them. So I always end up doing the A-B thing with my photos to find the best one of each set. Those are all copied into their own folder, usually titled 'print'. Then I examine each of those photos and do color-correction, image enhancement etc. What I am left with is a group of photos that are all excellent. And I still have the originals in case I need them. I can always archive them on DVD if I need the HD space (not likely when I work with 3GB video files). I may also create a second nested folder titled 'email' where I might downsample the finals into an easily-emailed size.

In short, I say keep as much as possible, but learn to identify your best pics and seggregate them so you can find them again easily in the future.

[Jason Dunn]

I am definitely a packrat. I agree with Chris, since storage space is so cheap, why not keep them all? So I do.

But my point was the just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD. ;-) My question for you would be can you give me a good reason for keeping every photo?

[Jason Dunn]

But, to my wife and I, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, so I figured keep everything. When my wife and I look at pictures, even if it is a bad picture, there might be a subtle detail that brings back a laugh or an additional memory that none of the other photos might.

I hear what you're saying, but let me play Devil's Advocate here for a minute (and please don't take offense). Take a look at this picture:

http://chrisgohlke.smugmug.com/photos/55835863-M.jpg

What subtle detail can you get from what image? What additional memory can you glean from an image like that?

A photo like this:
http://chrisgohlke.smugmug.com/photos/55835897-M.jpg

...would seem to have much more emotional impact, no?

I'm just trying to challenge the conventional thinking that because things are digital, they're automatically worth keeping. ;-)

[Jason Dunn]

Ok, let me get more specific here. Here we have two images that are similar:

http://chrisgohlke.smugmug.com/photos/55835900-M.jpg

and

http://chrisgohlke.smugmug.com/photos/55835902-M.jpg

Both are are the same thing: the woman standing in front of the cat. One is in focus, one is blurry. Why keep the blurry one? Don't they evoke the exact same memory and communicate exactly the same idea?

I'm realizing this issue is almost philosophical in nature, because it relates to how people think of memories. Fascinating! :D

[Chris Gohlke]

Good example (and that is truly a bad picture); BUT, that was taken from outside of the enclosure (through glass) before we went in. That actually reminded me that the cats were playing together before we went in. Naturally, they put their guard up once we entered.

But, I do see your point to an extent. I have four pictures all similar to that one. I'm betting you would delete all four. They are so similar, I could see just keeping one.

This kind of reminds me of the show "Clean Sweep" on TLC where they get chronic hoarders to clean out their houses. :D

[Chris Gohlke]

Both are are the same thing: the woman standing in front of the cat. One is in focus, one is blurry. Why keep the blurry one? Don't they evoke the exact same memory and communicate exactly the same idea?

But the blurry one is better lit. Ideally, I should fix up the clear one the best I can and delete the blurry one.

Really it is a psycological thing. I would imagine the same thing that makes someone a packrat with physical items would impact their digital photos as well. The effect might even be greater because there is essentially no cost to keeping everything versus the risk (however unfounded) of tossing something that you would wish you had kept.

[Jason Dunn]

But the blurry one is better lit. Ideally, I should fix up the clear one the best I can and delete the blurry one.

Right! Something this is what you want to keep to remember that memory:

http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/55835900-M.jpg

One good photo, not two that are almost the same. The idea of "I'll just keep 'em all" encourages you to not think about which are the best and tweak them to make them even better.

I would imagine the same thing that makes someone a packrat with physical items would impact their digital photos as well. The effect might even be greater because there is essentially no cost to keeping everything versus the risk (however unfounded) of tossing something that you would wish you had kept.

Absolutely! I think, though, that there is a cost, it's not not apparent. It's not storage - hard drives are insanely cheap. I think the real cost may be more related to time and future generations. So here's what I mean by that: let's say you add 2000 digital photos to your collection every year, but you don't cull/correct them. You just amass them. 20 years from now, when you look back on those memories, do you want to have to sort through 40,000 images, half of which are meaningless? Or would you rather have a collection of images that are easier to manage, share, view, etc.?

Also, what about sharing them with future generations? It's the difference between my grandmother giving me shoeboxes full of 5000 images, or her giving me photo albums of the 500 important images. I almost feel like I have an obligation to the future to keep my own history somewhat entertaining. ;-)

I'm realizing also that a huge part of this issue is the psychology of organization that a person has. Myself, I'm fairly "Type A" and like to have things organized. I like having my DVDs alphabetized, my MP3s tagged with proper metadata, and my digital photos organized. If someone reading this doesn't organize other aspects of their life, the concept of organizing digital photos is probably completely alien to them and this article is likely useless. :lol:

[Damion Chaplin]

Why keep the blurry one?

Well, I don't keep the blurry ones. :)

As for a reason why you should keep them, well, no particular reason, but can you give me a reason why I should delete them if I've already sorted through them and seggregated the best ones (and have plenty of storage space)? :wink:

Sometimes the dupes are cool because they remind me of how hard it was to get a certain shot... Sometimes I keep them just because my eye was in the viewfinder for most of the event and it's the only way I'll get to see the subtleties. Sometimes I take a number of shots in a sequence, but when I choose one to print it will only be one out of the set.

For example: I have a great set from Xmas with a coworker opening his gift from me. The various expressions that his face goes through are priceless. If I were to choose one to print though, it would just be the final shot where he's holding up his present with a big smile.
The other shots are kept only so I can re-experience the situation in the future. Are they great shots? No. Am I keeping them to show other people? No. Will I be deleting them? Definitely not.

As far as future generations go, I hate to say it, but I'm really not shooting for them. I'm primarily shooting for me. I don't expect future generations to sort through 50 pictures of my cat, even if I've culled them down from 500. :lol:

[Jason Dunn]

For example: I have a great set from Xmas with a coworker opening his gift from me. The various expressions that his face goes through are priceless. If I were to choose one to print though, it would just be the final shot where he's holding up his present with a big smile.
The other shots are kept only so I can re-experience the situation in the future. Are they great shots? No. Am I keeping them to show other people? No. Will I be deleting them? Definitely not.

Right, but I specifically explained that there are exceptions, and your exaple is one of them:

"There are exceptions to this rule of course - often times, especially with photos of human/animal subjects shot in rapid succession, you can capture spontaneous moments and the entire series of photos tells the story."

I'm thinking more of the examples that I mentioned in my article: 20 photos of the beach, 10 photos of palm trees, 30 photos of the family dog sitting in different positions but that are all basically the same...that sort of thing. ;-)

[Jason Dunn]

As far as future generations go, I hate to say it, but I'm really not shooting for them. I'm primarily shooting for me. I don't expect future generations to sort through 50 pictures of my cat, even if I've culled them down from 500. :lol:

Well, tell ya' what, email me in 50 years and tell me if you're happy you kept the 500 photos of your cat because when in your retirement you decide to organize your 185,098 total photos. :lol:

[Damion Chaplin]

OK, OK.

I guess the real reason I keep the old, unedited files is because:

"You never know" :D

Guess I'm just a packrat. I also have all too-many memories of deleting data because space was at a premium. Now that that's not an issue, I guess I just can't get myself to delete anything, especially not 'for my own good'. :P

[Jason Dunn]

I guess the real reason I keep the old, unedited files is because: "You never know"

Cool with me. My goal with this article wasn't to change anyone's mind or MAKE people delete their images, I just wanted to encourage people to think about their digital photography collections more. 8)

Someone else chime in with thoughts!

[Chris Gohlke]

I see what you are saying. We just got a paperbox full of pictures from the inlaws a few months back and I've been having a heck of a time organizing them. I found myself saying, "Why did they keep these?" for some of the shots (there are literally solid black photos). It never occured to me that I do the exact same thing, just digitally.

Still, I want to keep everything, but think of that as an archive of source material. My actually gallaries, etc should be made up of culled materials and I should never be going back to the source stuff. Also, I really need to invest in something like photoshop elements so I can clean up the pictures I do have (nice job on the one you did).

So what I will probably start doing is this. Make two copies of everything (I can already hear Jason screaming in agony). One copy is just an archive of everything that ideally never needs to be touched again, but this is the source material and should be kept. The second set gets culled, cleaned-up, etc. and this is what I show and is the shiny end product and is what most people will be intested in seeing..

[Jason Dunn]

We just got a paperbox full of pictures from the inlaws a few months back and I've been having a heck of a time organizing them. I found myself saying, "Why did they keep these?" for some of the shots (there are literally solid black photos). It never occured to me that I do the exact same thing, just digitally.

Wow - I couldn't have asked for a better example! ;-) Yeah, that's exactly what I was saying. Moreso, the question becomes, will you look back 20 years from now and wonder what YOU were thinking with keeping photos that should have been culled? ;-)

Also, I really need to invest in something like photoshop elements so I can clean up the pictures I do have (nice job on the one you did).

Thanks. Photoshop Elements 4.0, Auto Fix at 15% or so, resized to fit our forums.

Make two copies of everything (I can already hear Jason screaming in agony). One copy is just an archive of everything that ideally never needs to be touched again, but this is the source material and should be kept. The second set gets culled, cleaned-up, etc. and this is what I show and is the shiny end product and is what most people will be intested in seeing..

Nope, no screaming in agony here. ;-) I personally don't want to keep a second copy of unedited photos, but I can understand where you're coming from, and ultimately this article has gotten you think more about how you keep your photos, which is a good thing!

[Damion Chaplin]

Personally, I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that MS's promises of a 'fuzzy' search engine will actually pan out.

One of the reasons I keep a lot of my photos is because I never know when I might need a picture of the sun or a rose to use as clipart. Sometimes that's not what I'm photographing: The subject is out of focus, but that rose right next to them came out perfect; I was trying to shoot the moon, but instead the branches in the foreground came out perfect. I was actually shooting the subject, so technically it's not a good photo, but I'm still not going to discard it.

I can't wait until I can search for any photo of a rose and have the search engine find it without relying on me putting the word 'rose' in the filename.

[Jason Dunn]

One of the reasons I keep a lot of my photos is because I never know when I might need a picture of the sun or a rose to use as clipart.

Hmm. Interesting, that's not something I've ever considered (seems like a longshot at best). Still, wouldn't you want to crop the photo and save it as "branches" or something? If there's a good element in the photo that you want to keep, don't you want to "extract" it somehow?

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

I think Jason makes a great point here, and I fully agree with him. Having shot a lot of photos for quite a few years (this is with trannies and not digital), I find that holding on to photos that aren't particularly good or extra shots a waste of time and space.

Myself, I don't cull as much now since I only shoot what I think might come out well. I still keep a few imperfect shots, particularly those I want to remember. This is especially true for photos taken during a nice holiday.

For more serious work I am big in editing. I personally don't like sitting in front of the computer editing my photos, so I try to keep only the nice photos, and down to a manageable size that says what I want to say.

[Jason Dunn]

I thought of another one of my own personal motivations for culling: since I have all my photos on all my PCs, and the Xbox 360 is connected to my PC, it's really important for me to be able to fire up Picasa on any PC, or the photo viewer on the Xbox 360, and be able to show someone photos from my trip and not have to say "Oh, uh, ignore that blurry one, and pretend there aren't four photos of the same thing here". I did that once with some photos from Europe and it was painful having to present an un-organized group of photos. It was equally painful for the people I was showing the photos to. Ideally I like to take the time to create a customized photo presentation for the occasion, but since I don't always have the time to do that, it's important for me to have my photos organized.

[Damion Chaplin]

Still, wouldn't you want to crop the photo and save it as "branches" or something? If there's a good element in the photo that you want to keep, don't you want to "extract" it somehow?

Ideally, sure. However, I don't usually have time to do that to the photos I don't care so much about. I have a hard enough time finding time to edit the photos I do care about...

[mcsouth]

Jason, I think you also touched on another aspect of this issue when you talked about your new Mexico trip....

When I first got a digital camera, I was constantly filling that unit up, and would have exactly what you said, between 4 and 10 shots of the same item, when only one or two were necessary. Over time, I've gotten back to what I would consider some basics; composition, lighting and exposure settings.

Rather than just blasting away with the digital camera, assuming that "one of them will turn out okay", I've tried to get back to the careful, methodical approach that I used to take back when I was shooting 35mm, and had to actually pay for what I shot. Taking a quick moment to assess the scene, and to set the camera appropriately resulted in a few good shots, instead of lots of "okay" shots.

Now, I'm trying to use the shot capacity of my camera and hard drive by getting back to experimenting again - and I got some great images from last summer's vacation as a result.

I don't cull nearly as much as I probably should, but then I'm not shooting like a wild person anymore either........

[Darius Wey]

I'm realizing also that a huge part of this issue is the psychology of organization that a person has. Myself, I'm fairly "Type A" and like to have things organized. I like having my DVDs alphabetized, my MP3s tagged with proper metadata, and my digital photos organized.

Couldn't have said it better. I cull my images, for exactly the same reasons mentioned. When out and about, I'll have no hesitation in taking five shots of the same scene, but the follow-up culling process is very important. Sitting down and flipping through my pictures helps me ask myself a series of questions. How can I change the angle of this shot? How can I use lighting to my advantage? How can I make this shot better? The process of sorting my pictures and deleting the "trash" is an engaging experience.

The "storage is cheap" saying is a valid excuse, but sooner or later, the costs will add up.

[Bob12]

Except for very rare occasions, I delete blurred, overexposed, and underexposed shots. I also generally delete near duplicates unless something in the various pictures causes me to want to keep multiples. But I do that mostly for want of keeping the "best" ones. I have PLENTY of storage on my photo computer (900gb) so that's not an issue at all. I also carry 7gb of storage in the EOS-1D MkII and 4gb in the PowerShot Pro 1 which allows me to take as many shots as I want when I'm on-site and cull later at home. As I tend to do very little post processing, this scheme works well for me.

[Jake Ludington]

Related to this whole idea of deleting duplicate images, one of my readers pointed out an awesome app for exactly that purpose. Unique Filer (http://www.jakeludington.com/downloads/20060215_unique_filer.html) not only finds exact duplicates, it does a slick job of locating files that are compositionally identical, even after color correction, resizing, resampling and other effects have been applied. Not sure if that stays true to the idea of examining each photo and evolving as a photographer, but if you have a ton of dupes, getting a head start through software automation can't hurt.

[karinatwork]

Jason, you're so right, it's not even funny!

This is so me. I keep everything. Well, almost. I got over the bad habit of keeping even the blurry or dark ones, but I do hord all the others. All of them. And I keep buying computers with bigger hard drives.

But thank you for opening my eyes. Thank you for making me realize that deleting pictures does not (only) mean saving space. Deleting pictures will INDEED make me a better photographer. Maybe I will some day be able to take one of those shots that I love so much on purpose and not just because they happen "by accident".

This very evening I will start and clean up my hard drive. I will delete all of those pictures of my son that are so similar to each other that you could line them up and make a motion picture of them.

(Well, maybe after I'll archive them on a DVD first...)

:D

[Jason Dunn]

I will delete all of those pictures of my son that are so similar to each other that you could line them up and make a motion picture of them.

Hahaha...indeed, if you can make a flip-book from your photos, that's a good indicator that they may need some culling. ;-)

A good benchmark is, when looking at several images that are the same, asking yourself if the images evoke different emotions, or the same. Sometimes similar photos will have subtle differences - a different smile, a smirk, a coyish look in the eyes - but quite often it will be the same memory evoked with each of a series of images. That's when it's time to cull!

[Leon]

Rather than just blasting away with the digital camera, assuming that "one of them will turn out okay", I've tried to get back to the careful, methodical approach that I used to take back when I was shooting 35mm, and had to actually pay for what I shot. Taking a quick moment to assess the scene, and to set the camera appropriately resulted in a few good shots, instead of lots of "okay" shots.

Totally agree with that. I hardly have any duplicate shots. Shots that are a total mess (blurry or someone suddenly half in front of the subject) get deleted but shots that have slight lighting problems stay. It is unbelievable how many so-so shots you can turn into great shots after yet another few more months of Photoshop experience. Sometimes even just by converting them to B/W.

[greenup]

If you keep all your images, you never have to think about why one is better than the other.

If you are using your organizing software's "star system" or "mark up mechanism", you ARE critically appraising your work, which would accomplish the goal he's talking about above.

Additionally, Adobe organizer has "stacks" that are kindof designed to deal with the "multiple shot" phenomenon. Now only if it could figure out how to stack by itself, so I could waste less time doing it.

Now, personally, I find that hard drive space does go fast with a 4MB a shot, 3fps camera, but a an even better argument than space/money is attention. Having an archive full of "blah" shots that you have to sift through looking for the gold, the REAL "keepers", starts to turn the equation around as to whether you have a photo colection, or your photo colection has a maintainer. I haven't come up with a real solution to this myself yet, but services like riya give me hope.

Before I go, here are some reasons why I keep far more images than I probably should:

1. MANUFACTURING gold:
Using photoshop, I can grab the best faces from a large set of the same scene. This also applies for subject blocking and similar issues.

2. RECOVERING history:
That one special moment is the only one like it in all of history, future or past, that sweet baby girl will never smile exactly like that again, so even if the picture is blurry, I will sometimes save it with the hopes of recovering the focus with deconvolution or some other advanced (maybe not yet invented) technology.


truly, no picture I take is worthy of showing to others... they ALL need improvement of some kind; Auto leveling, noise reduction, cropping, "collage" work, ... I have a major segregation on my hard drive to deal with this: a directory hierarchy called "digicam", which contains my "negatives" (ordered/directoried by date) and a hierarchy called "collection" which contains improved works, semi-date, semi-subject organized.

Which sends me Completely Off Topic... Adobe Organizer has one of the COOLEST organization systems ANYWHERE. it's tagged, hierarchical, AND faceted. (three completely different organization systems that complement each other nicely, since they all have major weaknesses) However, it also has three bugs that just drive me bonkers:

Can only export static pages for web use based on a query you pre-define.

Based on a proprietary database technology.

Not extensible. it'd be great to be able to have plugins, or make my own algorithm to do that "stack" bit I was talking about above, or to have someone someday make a "riya-like" plugin. Still, the other two bugs above are bigger, and cool my interest in the fix of this one.


Still, they actually shipped theirs, while my lies in tinkerville on my PC.

[SassKwatch]

But my point was the just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD. ;-) My question for you would be can you give me a good reason for keeping every photo?

And just because one has a Delete key doesn't mean one SHOULD use it.:)

The problem I have with your premise of deleting 'good' shots is that you're making a permanent decision based on what you think about/how you perceive your shots today. I would NEVER delete 'good' shots. There have been entirely too many occasions where I've sifted through the archives 6 months / a year later and wondered why I originally selected one shot over another to include for 'public' viewing (whatever shape that may take).

The overall idea of 'culling' is certainly a good one and can definitely be a helpful learning tool. But occasionally sifting through available, non-deleted images can be every bit as educational.

Cull, yes........delete, no. "Memory is cheap.....memories are forever."

[Jason Dunn]

The problem I have with your premise of deleting 'good' shots is that you're making a permanent decision based on what you think about/how you perceive your shots today.

A good photo will always remain a good photo, and a bad photo will never be anything but a bad photo.

There are people that keep every copy of a magazine they subscribe to, just in case the might someday need to reference one article they read at one point in their life, and there are the people who keep only the best issues with the best articles. You're the former type of person, I'm the latter type of person. That's cool, I was just trying to open up people to the idea that deleting is not a bad word.

[Leon]

and a bad photo will never be anything but a bad photo.
That's not always the case. Sometimes you want to photograph a scene that just doesn't fit the limited dynamic range of the camera. Either the highlights are OK but the shadows are too dark or the shadows are OK but you've blown out the highlights. Then months later you learn a technique like this (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/digital-blending.shtml). You are able to recover the photos that originally weren't worth printing, especially when you are shooting in RAW. There's no way back if you'd deleted the photo before you learned how to fix it.

You're the latter type of person, I'm the former type of person.
Shouldn't that be the other way around?

I was just trying to open up people to the idea that deleting is not a bad word.
And I totally agree with that. It's always good to give people something to think about.

[greenup]

A good photo will always remain a good photo, and a bad photo will never be anything but a bad photo.

Not convinced, myself. Maybe I just have too much hope. (not something I am usually accused of, cool!)

check out this example of deconvolution (http://picturesolve.com/)
(here's another example of deconvolution (http://www.hamangia.freeserve.co.uk/examples13/index.html), with more practical starting points)

Some of the originals there were beyond "bad photo", they were "worthless", and got upgraded to "bad photo". Could a "poor photo" become "good"? I don't know. Have we reached the limits of the technology? certainly not! my grandchildren, if they desperately want to read my social security number off of an old blury picture found somewhere in the 300,000 I took during my life, may be able to.

Excessive? yeah, probably. But for now, keeping the "yuck"s doesn't hurt me so long as I'm able to keep them from getting in the way, which a good organizer tool can do, and deleting them, in my perception, has a potential hurt (for me or mine), miniscule that it may be.

I bet you wouldn't be surprised that I typically scan pictures well beyond the actual resolution of the subject matter. (typically 600-1200 dpi, about twice what is normally recommended. nyquist's theorem, however, states that to reproduce a waveform, you have to sample at twice the required frequency)

You can ignore me now :lol:

[Jason Dunn]

Shouldn't that be the other way around?

Yes, apologies, I've fixed that.

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

A piss poor photo will remain a piss poor photo. Try to distance yourself from the fact you took the photo and look over it with a critical eye. Technology might improve, but I won't count on it to improve shots that were poor to begin with.

[SassKwatch]

There are people that keep every copy of a magazine they subscribe to, just in case the might someday need to reference one article they read at one point in their life, and there are the people who keep only the best issues with the best articles. You're the former type of person, I'm the latter type of person. That's cool, I was just trying to open up people to the idea that deleting is not a bad word.

Oh, I'm not at all suggesting deleting is a bad word. I do it...but admittedly I'm likely more judicious with the use of the Delete key than you. I essentially act like a single person living in a 4 bdrm house....whereas you live in a studio apartment. :)

My only point was that.....if I've taken 100 shots of some subject/event, all 100 *may* be 'good' from a composition/exposure standpoint. But it doesn't take all 100 of them to tell the story of that subject/event. And if I'm presenting the story for public consumption (even if that 'public' is only family), I will likely cull it down to the fewest number possible to convey that story. But if the other 90 were 'good' (yeah, right) from an exposure/composition standpoint, I'd definitely keep them around.....might tell a different story some day.

[Jason Dunn]

But if the other 90 were 'good' (yeah, right) from an exposure/composition standpoint, I'd definitely keep them around.....might tell a different story some day.

And that's where we differ it seems - 90 photos of exactly the same thing multiplied by hundreds of photo shoots, to me, is useless bloat. When I load up Picasa and it scans my library, I want to have 20,000 unique photos, not 80,000 photos with 60,000 duplicates. To me, that's just plain silly.

But to each his own, your hard drive space is your realm, not mine. ;-)

[Jeremy Charette]

I finally got around to this topic, and interestingly enough, this is something Microsoft has been thinking hard about.

I just got an iPod, and have been listening to various podcasts. Today I caught the CES Keynote by Bill Gates, where the Windows Vista product manager talks about the fact that Vista will save an unedited original copy of every picture you decide to edit, whether you crop it, adjust the brightness or contrast, or do something far more extreme. You will always be able to go back to a virgin copy of the picture if you decide to change your mind in the future.

Also, keep in mind that Vista will have a "rating" system for photos, just like WMP and iTunes have for songs. So all of those out of focus, blurry, or just plain boring photos can be given a 1 star rating, so if you sort by rating you'll never have to look at them, only the top rated photos. Another brilliant idea.

Part of Microsoft's central vision is cutting down on the clutter in computing. There's so much information out there, and so many files and programs users have to work with, that MS sees the value in creating a unified user experience, and presenting users with only relevant information and media, thereby increasing productivity and usability dramatically.

[SassKwatch]

Part of Microsoft's central vision is cutting down on the clutter in computing.

Now, why did that statement make me chuckle.:)

Just the fact they're considering including photo organizer s/w functions into the OS belies the above......as if every computer owner will make use of such. A textbook example of 'bloatware', IMO.

[Jason Dunn]

Just the fact they're considering including photo organizer s/w functions into the OS belies the above......as if every computer owner will make use of such. A textbook example of 'bloatware', IMO.

I have to disagree. I do some home consulting, and I'm always amazed how many people, even those with digital cameras, are using the default XP picture\fax viewer and managing their photos with Explorer. Even with free tools such as Picasa, in my experience Joe User doesn't tend to install a lot of third party software, especially when they don't realize there's a better way to be managing their photos. Will you or I use it? Probably not. But useless bloatware? Nope. Do you think iPhoto is bloatware as well? It comes with every new Mac, right?

[SassKwatch]

Do you think iPhoto is bloatware as well? It comes with every new Mac, right?

I know nothing re: MACs....but if it's tightly integrated into the OS, then yes it's bloatware.....IMO. If it's just another app that can be deleted at the user's discretion w/o causing the OS to go into a Max Headroom stutter, then GREAT!

My perspective comes from working in desktop support in a large enterprise environment and trying to make device 'images' to be used routinely for building new workstations and trying to pare down the OS to only those apps/functions needed for the purposes of conducting our business. So much of the stuff in Windows is just superfluous junk for our business needs (WMP, Movie Maker, etc)......and additional photo organizing stuff is just going to be that much more bloat.

[Jason Dunn]

I have a follow-up article to this one going to be posted in the next week or so (hopefully), so if this topic interests you, watch for it!

[SassKwatch]

I have a follow-up article to this one going to be posted in the next week or so (hopefully), so if this topic interests you, watch for it!

Given our rather diverse perspectives on the first round, I can't wait to see the followup. :)