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culling photos
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Aug 10, 2018 09:37:02   #
wishaw
 
I keep everything. I spent years doing weddings. The pictures that the photographers think are the best are never the ones the bride and the brides mother picks.
Also I take pictures of my grandchildren. The picture I pick is never the one my daughter picks to frame.
One of these days she will inherit the entire collection and will have a fun time looking at them. There is currently 200,000. Do not know how many there will be in the end

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Aug 10, 2018 09:42:41   #
gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast
 
I think that saving all those photos, on media that can last for decades beyond our lifetime, is simply part of our desire for an afterlife. So given that, I prefer to not carry all my failures into eternity. But back in the world of now, if you don't have a regular mechanism to revisit any of those photos, then their value is minimal. You decided to take the photo, you can decide to throw it away. It's your choice.

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Aug 10, 2018 09:50:52   #
CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City
 
steve49 wrote:
Thanks for all the replies.
My take from all this is that the delete key is important, use it.
next step is go through a trip at a time and cull approx 1/2 what is left.

Steve - maybe this doesn't apply to your situation, but possibly others are unsure of what to look for when evaluating their images. They might also need to look at their tools and consider whether they have the tool(s) needed to do the culling step as efficiently as possible.

I shoot in RAW and use a tool named FastRawViewer (FRV). No conversion, no import, no processing, etc. FRV lets me look at images at 100% and that is the level needed to see if it's sharp. So, I run at least two passes at 100% looking at the fine details getting ride of everything that fails in the details. Images that are not sharp in the details, while still in the unprocessed RAW, they will not get sharper in processing nor by laying around in one's digital hoard waiting for the passage of time. A third or final pass before beginning to edit is looking at the images in full screen and looking at the composition. Other tools like Canon's DPP or the similar Nikon software also can be used for the same initial culling steps while viewing the details at 100%.

Throughout the edit process I continue to discard images, but usually in the process of picking the best of similar images. The final cull is looking critical at the fully edited results and looking for consistency. There will be some that obviously are better than others in composition, lighting, uniqueness of the moment, etc. There will be a 2nd tier that are all really good and are needed to tell a complete story, whatever that story might be. But even at the end of editing and multiple rounds of culling, there will be some that no longer make the grade. Those too need to be discarded. They're not keeping up with the herd. They too will not improve from time spent in the digital hoard.

Have a great trip. We look forward to the results.

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Aug 10, 2018 09:52:10   #
ggttc Loc: TN
 
I take 3-400 shots a week for an animal shelter so they can post the pics to Instagram etc. I cull on an Ipad...touch the photo and it's gone from the memory card....and I am ruthless, I can cull 400 photos in 5 to 6 minutes.

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Aug 10, 2018 09:59:41   #
mikegreenwald Loc: Illinois
 
CHG_CANON wrote:
Hey Steve, you beat me to a topic I've been collecting notes, ref: culling, from a recent multi-day trip. I came home from 7-days in Oshkosh, WI with 8830 RAW images using 215 GB. This morning, on hopefully my final day of part-time editing, I'm down to 439 images. I'd set a mental goal of 25 keepers per day from 6- to 12-hours of shooting each day. Obviously, I've missed my daily keeper goal (7x25=175).

I believe in ruthless culling. I have the same planes from different days from a 7-day airshow. The exposure and sharpness may be equally strong, but one day had better light or better background clouds. I've been using the Lightroom compare tool to pit two against each other side by side and getting rid of the version(s) I won't keep / don't need. I don't need the inferior versions from other days. Even if two were "perfect", I don't need two virtually identical versions.

Culling is necessary to improve your photography. If you can't determine your best image from a small sequence, ask for someone to view them and help you decide. But, you need to develop the skill to make the delete decision yourself as well as the discipline to make and perform the culling effort. There's lots of different tools and approaches based on colors, ratings, sorting, filters, etc. The process is less important than the end-result of finding, editing, keeping the best and deleting all the rest, permanently.

You mention revisiting older material. Here's where the ruthlessness has it's benefits. I only want finished images and I only want the best. If I quickly need an image for a new purpose, I don't have time to edit that image from scratch. I didn't go looking for work / rework, beyond maybe a new crop relative to the new purpose. I hate when I find my former self didn't make the 'which is best decision' and I'm presented with culling decisions that should already have been made. Remember the adage: you're only as good as the weakest image you share. Your best images show your improvement, everything else does not.
Hey Steve, you beat me to a topic I've been collec... (show quote)




I see lots of “ditto” above, and for me the ditto goes to this post. After two, two week trips to Antarctica, I was left with around 9000 shots. I wanted around a dozen for prints, and around two hundred for a slide show. In the end, I was able to cull to 208 for the slide show - any longer gets pretty hard on the audience. Within the 208 were those I printed, up to 24”x36” prints.

The much larger problem then became what prints do I then remove from the walls to hang the new prints. Rotation becomes a never ending task.... I have an unreasonable number or stored prints in the air-conditioned basement. Fortunately, woodworking is a hobby too, so it’s fun to make new and different frames.

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Aug 10, 2018 10:03:11   #
CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City
 
wds0410 wrote:
This actually made me smile. Now I know you are a professional and I'm just an amateur and this trip of yours was action shooting versus what I like to do which is landscape photos but I don't think I've shot 8000 photos in 5 years let alone in a week! Anyhow, what I do is delete the bland, out of focus, poorly composed, crappy light, etc. and keep the rest. Went to AZ and Utah this past spring for 10 days, took about 700 images, kept about 100 and out of those maybe 30 are nice the rest are just for memories sake. Occasionally, I'll see a tip about post processing and revisit a raw file but that is really rare.
This actually made me smile. Now I know you are a ... (show quote)


Thank you wds0410. This morning the results are down the 371 from the original 8k count. I use a few different social / image sharing sites as well as a digital frame. At the end of an edit session, I pass through my images and rate them for use on the various platforms where some are kept only for the digital frame. But, if they can't pass muster for use even on the digital frame where only family and friends will see that work, they'll get discarded at that point too.

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Aug 10, 2018 10:05:31   #
brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky
 
wmcy wrote:
Bruce,

For my own education, what is the advantage of importing your shots as DNG vs NEF?

Thanks.

Wm.


In making my decision to do so, I found it appealing that the data normally written to an XMP file is written directly into the DNG, thereby eliminating the extra XMP file. It has worked well for me and since I use the Adobe software, the file is compatible with everything.

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Aug 10, 2018 10:10:48   #
twillsol Loc: St. Louis, MO
 
mizzee wrote:
Once I bring my photos into LR, I page through them, flag the obvious losers and then delete them permanently. I see no point in keeping out of focus, poorly composed, or just “meh” images. I know I’ll never try to salvage them.


Me too!

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Aug 10, 2018 10:15:19   #
wmcy Loc: Charlotte
 
brucewells wrote:
In making my decision to do so, I found it appealing that the data normally written to an XMP file is written directly into the DNG, thereby eliminating the extra XMP file. It has worked well for me and since I use the Adobe software, the file is compatible with everything.


Thank you.

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Aug 10, 2018 10:17:59   #
rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona
 
No wrestling involved. Keep what I shoot. However, I'm not a spray and pray photographer. On three recent outings, one to Canyon De Chelly, one to The Bario Cafe and one to the Windsor Hotel. I took a total, among them, of 10 photographs. The number of photographs I printed 9. One was just a personal photo of a motel exterior.

I keep what I shot. I have 13 three-ring binders filled with negatives, and several thousand digital images. The "bad" ones still serve a purpose. So, I keep them all.
--Bob
steve49 wrote:
What does everyone do when it comes to thinning out the photos that they shoot?
Do you save everything cause storage is cheap or
do you delete photos for good once you have sorted the " keepers"?

It is so easy to build a huge library with the ease of shooting digitally and I guess I wonder
how often I will revisit old material.

I travel a lot and generally sort by trip but do have a hard time picking what to save and what to chop.
Lately I find myself keeping the best and deleting the rest...

Anyone else wrestle with this?
What does everyone do when it comes to thinning ou... (show quote)

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Aug 10, 2018 10:20:05   #
hj Loc: Florida
 
It amazes me that because one chose to push the shutter at a given instant, now that picture whether good or bad is locked into storage for perpetuity. Amazing that some say "I never delete anything". Was it FATE that you pushed the shutter at that exact moment? If you had not, would you forever live with regret that you hadn't captured that moment in time. I notice one person posted their family would have fun looking at his 200,000 pics. I doubt it because many are mediocre or worse. CULL WITHOUT SHAME. I see others take 8000 pics on a one week trip. Taking photos at a machine-gun pace hoping to get a few keepers is not photography in my opinion.

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Aug 10, 2018 10:28:11   #
DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA
 
wmcy wrote:
Bruce,

For my own education, what is the advantage of importing your shots as DNG vs NEF?

Thanks.

Wm.


I can't speak for Bruce, but the dng vs nef (or other raw) thing has been discussed widely over the years. I did a compilation of pros and cons a couple years ago and I don't think things have changed much since then. https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/user-page?upnum=1419

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Aug 10, 2018 10:57:25   #
wmcy Loc: Charlotte
 
DirtFarmer wrote:
I can't speak for Bruce, but the dng vs nef (or other raw) thing has been discussed widely over the years. I did a compilation of pros and cons a couple years ago and I don't think things have changed much since then. https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/user-page?upnum=1419



And thanks to you Dirtfarmer.

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Aug 10, 2018 11:06:02   #
jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ
 
I wrestle with it too. When I download my pics to the computer I try to mark those that are obviously not making the grade and then delete them right away. Then pick the ones I like and edit them. Then, after editing, I move them to a more permanent place on an external drive. Done. But sometimes I get backed up and lazy and don't feel like culling through all the photos I just downloaded. So I'll just find several that I like, edit those, post or print, and then move them all to the external drive. Like you said, drive space is pretty cheap these days. Although, I've just about got a 4TB drive full along with it's backup drive. So I might have to buy another 4TB drive pretty soon.

steve49 wrote:
What does everyone do when it comes to thinning out the photos that they shoot?
Do you save everything cause storage is cheap or
do you delete photos for good once you have sorted the " keepers"?

It is so easy to build a huge library with the ease of shooting digitally and I guess I wonder
how often I will revisit old material.

I travel a lot and generally sort by trip but do have a hard time picking what to save and what to chop.
Lately I find myself keeping the best and deleting the rest...

Anyone else wrestle with this?
What does everyone do when it comes to thinning ou... (show quote)

Reply
Aug 10, 2018 11:08:38   #
tommystrat Loc: Bigfork, Montana
 
My process is pretty simple - I don't (usually!) chimp, so I take all my images and download them into a folder on my computer. I make one pass in PS and get rid of the obvious losers. Also, if I have taken multiple shots of the same subject, I generally keep the best 2 and get rid of the rest. Then, if there are obvious images that could be really good, I might work on them further in PP. Once that's done, I put them all away for about 2-3 months. When I return to them, I have a fresh eye and can then cull out the remaining images that don't measure up. If I shoot 200 images on a particular day, I am likely to keep 10 or less once this process has run its course. But, everyone is different and storage is cheap...still, keeping an out-of-focus, marginally composed landscape in the belief that I might someday find a use for it or it might magically transform to a "keeper" is not something I do.

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