How many is too many ? (Page 4): I have thousands of images and I could care less how many. During the past year, since people know I have been taking pictures for years, I received...

hank6595 Loc: Amesbury, MA

I have thousands of images and I could care less how many. During the past year, since people know I have been taking pictures for years, I received three calls from people who lost a loved one and wanted to know if I had any pictures. Just happens, I did, and gladly made copies of them and sent them to the people who made the request and that made me feel good. Digital photography has come a long way.

tHANKs

Murray Loc: New Westminster

I cull mine regularly.

CatMarley Loc: North Carolina

chapjohn wrote:

I have been keeping almost evey image since 2000 and I right about 100,000 just over 300 GB of space. Most are jpeg images. Some are bad some are OK. Some day when I can't use my hands or feet, I may look for and PP some of them.

You do realize that it would take about 5 months, 8 hours a day, 7 days a week just to LOOK at them all! I think there may be a serious need for some psychotropic medication for some members of the HOG list!

mallen1330 Loc: Chicago western suburbs

CatMarley wrote:

You do realize that it would take about 5 months, 8 hours a day, 7 days a week just to LOOK at them all! I think there may be a serious need for some psychotropic medication for some members of the HOG list!

Ha! That's assuming that one keeps archive storage for the purpose of repeated viewing. I never look at my archived images until a client requests a revision or for some reason they lost the processed images I sold to them.

bobmcculloch Loc: NYC, NY

CatMarley wrote:

You do realize that it would take about 5 months, 8 hours a day, 7 days a week just to LOOK at them all! I think there may be a serious need for some psychotropic medication for some members of the HOG list!

It's called "Photo Therapy"

CatMarley Loc: North Carolina

mallen1330 wrote:

Ha! That's assuming that one keeps archive storage for the purpose of repeated viewing. I never look at my archived images until a client requests a revision or for some reason they lost the processed images I sold to them.

Assuming you have a VERY good filing system, that allows you to find a specific photo, I can understand archiving a large number of images as a professional photographer. But as a casual photographer, I have trouble organizing even a few thousand. I have no idea, at this point, what I have. I think digital storage has deprived us of our ability to discriminate and we just save everything. When all we had was some shoeboxes we had to use common sense. Plus it cost an arm and a leg to process all those slides!

mallen1330 Loc: Chicago western suburbs

CatMarley wrote:

Assuming you have a VERY good filing system, that allows you to find a specific photo, I can understand archiving a large number of images as a professional photographer. ...

Right! My client bookkeeping database keeps the date and description for each job. My original images are stored by date in individual folders - one for each day. So, it is very simple and straightforward to find the photos I took for a specific job on a specific date.

Jackdoor Loc: Huddersfield, Yorkshire.

kemo wrote:

Recent topics about cloud storage have piqued my interest. Some folks have over 100,000 images and apparently quite a few have between 50 and 100 k. I'm curious to know: why so many ? How often are these shots viewed, if ever, so why do we keep them ? I cull the catalogs regularly because I am the antithesis of a pack rat. How many shots of Big Ben over three vacations do I really want. Would like to know how others feel about 100,000 shots

Storage is dirt cheap, and you just never know...

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

kemo wrote:

Recent topics about cloud storage have piqued my interest. Some folks have over 100,000 images and apparently quite a few have between 50 and 100 k. I'm curious to know: why so many ? How often are these shots viewed, if ever, so why do we keep them ? I cull the catalogs regularly because I am the antithesis of a pack rat. How many shots of Big Ben over three vacations do I really want. Would like to know how others feel about 100,000 shots

I don't think it matters if you have 100000 or 300000 shots or more, as long as you have the computing power, there is no too many!

Mark7829 Loc: Calfornia

kemo wrote:

Recent topics about cloud storage have piqued my interest. Some folks have over 100,000 images and apparently quite a few have between 50 and 100 k. I'm curious to know: why so many ? How often are these shots viewed, if ever, so why do we keep them ? I cull the catalogs regularly because I am the antithesis of a pack rat. How many shots of Big Ben over three vacations do I really want. Would like to know how others feel about 100,000 shots

It is just easier just to leave them where they are than to take the time to delete them.

Also as technology improves those old images may be improved upon beyond what you can imagine.

What I don't get are those who shoot jpeg and raw and have duplicates of some very bad images.

Murray Loc: New Westminster

Mark7829 wrote:

It is just easier just to leave them where they are than to take the time to delete them.

Also as technology improves those old images may be improved upon beyond what you can imagine.

What I don't get are those who shoot jpeg and raw and have duplicates of some very bad images.

There's software for that. I was astounded at the duplication in my files. I set it to "find similar".

fuminous Loc: Luling, LA... for now...

Jackdoor wrote:

Storage is dirt cheap, and you just never know...

As mentioned earlier, I am at this moment running recovery software on multiple external drives. As a result, I'm quite nostalgic seeing again faces of relatives, loved ones past, girlfriends and the best doggies in the world. I wonder why I deleted them... Of course, I know why, not out of anger or indiference but purely as a matter of physical economics. Yes, storage is cheap and getting cheaper but if additional storage isn't handy when you need it, well, somethin's gotta go. Sometimes that something is something with latent value, a worth not appreciated or remembered or even missed... and yet, when found again, goes into safe storage- with multiple copies. A scrap of something that once was... Perhaps the value is in recognizing things always change and things end, always. I'm sure you Jungians out there can state it better.

daeod Loc: Levittown, PA

Different views, different times of day, time of year can make the same item will look different!

GENorkus Loc: Washington Twp, Michigan

Steve Perry wrote:

I have no clue how many images I have, I just keep them all. Honestly, it's easier to keep them then to delete them and HD space is cheap.

In the last few words you say HD space is cheap. That may be true until your time is figured into the equation.

splatbass Loc: Honolulu

BullMoose wrote:

It's also fun to work over some of those earlier images with new things I've learned. It's amazing and surprising to see how I've grown.

I do this too. Sometimes I find one I missed the first time. Sometimes if it has been a while I see one in a new light and make a good picture out of one I rejected previously (time can change your perspective). Sometimes I just improve one I did previously using techniques I've learned since. Sometimes I'm just bored and unable to go out and shoot, so I look through my files for something interesting to work on.

Seems like a lot of reasons to keep them.