dave.m

oh how true! I was hunting for a particular negative to scan and reprint. When I went through them there was so much irrelevant junk I was embarrased. What posessed me to take a photo of a strange dog in a field? I could go on. When I filtered the 100 or so images what was significant was the only ones that mattered today were of the people - family, friends, and a few that set the context. And don't forget they were in film days when every frame was carefully thought out (yea, right!)

Today I follow the advice of a professional who I asked the same question. His suggestions: Use a different memory card for each day. At the end of each day transfer images to a decent viewer (android 8" tablet in my case.) First quick pass, delete all images that are similar (ie 5 frames on rapid shooting of the same subject), or definitely useless (out of focus or hopelessly incorrect exposure or similar.) Then pass again. There are then 3 grades of images: keepers which you will definitely work on/ want to print or publish (5*), rejects which you would never use (0*) and maybe's (4*) which you might use if the same subject does not have a (5*). He argued if you are not to sure about a 4* why bother with 3,2,1? Finally check your images at the end of each day - this keeps the review process short and manageable. At the end of the event, do a quick review of everything you kept in case there are near duplicates on different days, and if there is something you desperately want to retrieve, you can from the cards before you reformat for the next event. He also suggested that if that seems a bit of a flog, imagine doing a review at the end of a long week of perhaps 1000s of images, or 10,000s if you are trying to find something 2 years downstream.

I did this on a bird shoot, and according to the exposure numbers, I shot almost 700 frames in 2 hours (continuous shooting, typically 5 to 8 frames at a time.) I filtered that to less than 150, and finished with 50 or so in an album.

Similarly with a 4 day trip to NY. 300+ according to exposure numbers, filtered to just over 100, 53 in the album. one double page spread but most 2 or 3 per page, gave a 26 page album which people enjoy looking at (as far as I can tell Although looking at it again, could probably remove 5 images because of similarity to others.

wishaw

Many are mediocre or worse. Shame on you. Commenting on my pictures without seeing them

tomad Loc: North Carolina

I've taken thousands of photos of hummingbirds recently. I have a problem culling and tend to keep everything unless it is out of focus or the subject is half in and half out of the photo. I did one of my infrequent photo posts recently (https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-546810-1.html) and it took me several days to narrow the field down to the few I posted. My process included several stages. The first was to go through all of them in one pass (took several days) and move all the ones that seemed good, i.e., good focus and good subject pose (for these) and still ended up with over 800 photos in a separate folder called "Best". Then I went through those over another couple of days and moved the very best ones to a folder called "Best of Best" resulting in about 400 photos, then went through that folder and narrowed it down to about 92 files, 7 of which I chose to post on UHH.

Culling to me is the hardest part of photography and now that I have learned to use a more sophisticated editor I find myself going back to some older photos that I might have thrown out originally that can be made into good shots through editing, so be careful not to over cull, especially if you are just learning to edit. Disk space is pretty cheap these days.

steve49 Loc: massachusetts

tommystrat
I thk it is a solid idea to make a first pass and then relook at whats left after some time.. whether a few months or years even.

make a next pass at that point.

photoman022 Loc: Manchester CT USA

I have my own file system for my photos (I use Photoshop Elements 14). I started the file system when I first got into digital photography and I'm not about to change it. That being said, when I photograph a large number of scenes I open the photos and change the "view" to extra large icons. I then do a quick run through and give the photos a rating of "a", "b", or "c". I just add the designation at the beginning of the file number by going to f2 (rename), pressing my home key, and typing in the designation.

How do I choose which ones are keepers? I ask, "will I print this and hang it on my wall?" Only my best photos get processed and the best of the best go into a special portfolio for printing and sharing.

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

I WISH I had the time to properly cull. The best I can get done is to trash the awful ones, out of focus, etc., as I go through my work to select what I submit to my clients. Upon import, files are added to a local drive, the catalogue and a Synology NAS system. The NAS files remain unchanged as a backup -- nothing is ever deleted. When you shoot 100,000+ images a year (sports action) time is of the essence. I have the hardware and software to cull about 2500 images an hour. When that is completed I finish my pp and upload the finished images. On a very busy day I might have four games to shoot which would yield about 7500 images so my pp time would be at least three, perhaps five hours. Keeps me off the streets! Best of luck.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

I look at technically good ones at least to me.
Delete the rest.
Then every year or so as I look at them delete more that have no real meaning to others or myself.
I keep most to help remember an event or trip but once I am gone they will also be mostly meaningless to others.
Some will be kept by family if they are in the photo or has meaning to them.
So it is an ongoing process just as life is and what's important changes.

ppage Loc: Pittsburg, (San Francisco area)

"keeping the best and deleting the rest" - That's me in a nutshell. I've been shooting for seriously for four years and only have about 250GB of photos and that is only because I have a lot of sentimental family stuff I keep from before when I wasn't shooting so seriously. As such, my backups and my catalog are entirely manageable. I am not a pro, so I don't have to store any work for clients so there's that... I hear and see discussions all the time about what to do when you fill up your hard drives and the trials and tribulations of backup. Well if everyone didn't keep so much crap, they wouldn't have these problems. Cheap storage has spawned photography hoarders moving around in little tunnels in their digital houses. I did a little math. Even if all my photos were 20MB (Which they certainly are not) that would be 12,500 photos. I will never print that many so I am essentially just archiving them on my hard disk. Having more than 12,000 photos to catalog my life and travels is great, more than enough. Storage is so cheap, it doesn't matter anyway. I just refuse to manage a lot of junk.

hj Loc: Florida

Obviously I didn't comment on the quality of your pics since I haven't seen them, but only on the fact that no family member is going to have fun looking at 200,000 pics when you're gone. My comments related to a mix of posts, but you must have recognized yourself to some extent. Sorry if I seemed rude.

coolhanduke Loc: Redondo Beach, CA

I shoot a ton of photos, especially sunsets on the west coast.

Typically I down load them all and then usually do a backup on my 8TB backup drive. I also backup on a portable 3TB drive which I keep off location in case of theft or fire. I do this so I don't procrastinate and risk that something happens that I loose the files.

I do a quick look through all the photos and make a quick determination or keepers or non-keepers. The way I do this is I ask myself the question, can I sell this photo?. Ir not, it gets deleted. I know I should probably follow this procedure before I backup the files but I figure if I need to clean up my backup it will be much easier to do after saving the keepers.

wishaw

I should have said I have used picasa. Therefore my daughter can look at every visit to Disney, trips to Spain, Christmas, pics of her starting in 1983,her and me, her and her mother. I do not expect her to go thru them chronologically but pick and choose.
Maybe I am a hoarder. I make wooden and acrylic pens. I have a drawer full of 1/2 inch cubes cut from the blanks. Maybe I should throw them away but occasionally I pick out a dozen bits and make a pen with them.
Keep on snapping.

safeman

One of the things I have learned in my75 years is that you ALWAYS want something the day after you get rid of it. I have every negative, print or electronic image I have ever taken. Some of them are really bad but they may trigger a memory. That is important to us old folks.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

I only keep the ones, I think I may be printing, the rest goes in the trash!

TonyL Loc: Coventry, UK

I get a feel for anything that's got any mileage in it. That said i usually only delete stuff that just isn't worth keeping for whatever reason.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

In film days, I cut 35mm negs in strips of six and put each roll into a Negafile glassine, AFTER first making a contact sheet on 8x10 paper. I labeled the contact sheet the same as the negatives, so I could file them separately. Year/Month/Subject/Roll # of #

Now, I first load my originals into a file folder structure I can access with any application.

Year folder (contains the .lrcat Lightroom catalog file)

Month folders (in the year folder)

Event/Job/Subject Name (in the month folders)

In the Event folder, I'll have some of these:

Raw Images
Camera JPEGs (if captured)
Intermediate TIFFs
Print JPEGs
Print TIFFs
Proof JPEGs
[Other] JPEGs

Then I "import" them "in place" into Lightroom, evaluate in full screen, give them star ratings, add metadata where warranted, and delete the no-stars. Then I process the five star images. Next, I process four star images, three star images, and take a longer look at the one and two star images. By that time, I usually have what I need. I export to one or more of the folders created earlier, depending on the need.

At the end of the year, I just back up the year folder to an external drive, and start a new structure and a new Lightroom Catalog! If I need to go back to an old event, I just plug in the right drive, switch catalogs, do what I need to do (often just work on a single image or two), then switch back to my current catalog and drive.

Yes, of course I back up everything in several places...