Marn

There is mention of photogrphers the shoot hundreds of photos a week. After they spend too much of their lives at the computer, what do they do with all of them.
I've been shoot ing for more than 50 years, and lately find myself asking what am I going to do with this picture I'm about to take.
I already have thousands of slides and in my computer.

clh3RD

I have found one iron clad rule that works for me in taking photos:

It is not the having pictures, it is the taking .

So snap away and enjoy.

traveler90712 Loc: Lake Worth, Fl.

Move them to an external storage. Should your computer crash you'll still have your photos.

soli Loc: London, UK.

This is a problem. I had a friend ARPS who had 12x16 photos by the dozen, many of them exhibited, all done by the expensive Cibachrome method. I asked him your question. They were all lying in the loft! He died some time ago just when digital was in its inception. He was a super photographer, money no object.

amehta Loc: Boston

This is an excellent question, one I'm grappling with too.

A lot of my pictures get shared with the subjects, either sports or portraits. I'll sometimes make prints for them, there's a bit of a backlash to digital, with enlargements making a bit of a "comeback". :-)

I look forward to hearing other people's thoughts and experiences on this.

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

jimmya Loc: Phoenix

I shoot only digital photos these days and don't print very many.

I keep mine on an external hard drive with a back up copy of my current folder on a 2nd external. When that particular folder is full I burn it to DVD and store these in a CD zip folder in my closet but keep the folders on my external for easy access. It works for me.

Good luck

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

Welcome Marn. Hope you're enjoying this fun and informative forum :)

As my thumbs-up to clh3rd's comments suggest, I am all about being in the moment of shooting (mostly nature). And it is not uncommon for me to take 1,000 shots in a week since buying the Canon SX50 for birds and wildlife.

But when I transfer the images to my computer, I try to eliminate at least half right away. Then I store by subject matter, and occasionally go to a folder and delete more as time passes, if I've gotten some better shots of the same subject - or am just not as enamored of an image as first thought.

SpeedyWilson Loc: Upstate South Carolina

<<< Formerly MisterWilson
------------

We're just going to save them for future generations to figure out what to do with them. Having more family reunions and funerals will briefly find a purpose for a few images.

Neubee Loc: Wisconsin

Cull out the POOR ones and catalog or folder file and store
the rest on "CD'S"..

Bubu Loc: Out of this solar system

I guess they are taken to be enjoyed. Maybe they should be placed in slideshows or Albums for present and future generations. You can make the slideshows and place on DVDs. I have a few slideshows of my newly born nieces and nephews (they are in their 40's now) that I still enjoy and I am sure that after I pass -- if DVD players are still around - they will enjoy them too. Everything is perishable. The joy of taking and showing is for now- and a few more years ahead.

scubamann Loc: Mount Joy, PA

Storage is not the problem as much as whom do you want to have them when your gone. I have a rider in my will for different people to recieve my works.

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

Besides taking pictures, I also like scrapbooking.
The photos I brought with me "from home" - some date back to around 1890 - and the photos I had printed from film, are all in photoalbums (and I am in the process of scanning the negatives). The very early digital photos I took, also were printed as photos and put into albums.
After I discovered digital scrapbooking, the album pages were arranged first, captions or stories added, then printed as pages - and put into albums.
Not that long ago, I discovered photobooks, and think I will be using them for those "event-photos" that will fill up a book.

The best times are, when one or more of my grandchildren are here and we pull a photoalbum out to look at the pictures and I tell them the stories that go with them. The end-result is not just that the grandkids and I have enjoyable times together, but my grandchildren also know the names of their grandparents and even great-grandparents, and they know who fits where in the family.
Since they see what I do with the photos, it also has become a lot easier to get them to pose for me!

Oh, and one of my daughters-in-law has asked if she can have all the albums "when the time comes..."

Selkii Loc: Oakland, CA & Vancouver Island

I left photography for several years and this was one if the reasons. We have stacks of photo albums, thousands of slides and, now, multiple, large hard drives filled with digital images. I still have not culled out photos from trips taken over 15 years ago. There just isn't enough time to do everything. I wonder if my heirs will even care about them at all.

Early last year, I came to a similar conclusion as clh3RD's statement... there is joy in the act of photographing, a joy in seeing something turn out as you envisioned it. Even if the image is boxed up, never to be seen again, it was all worth that one moment of happy satisfaction.

chelesphotography Loc: Greenville, NC

Love clh3rd's statement! So very true!!