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To Delete or Not to Delete
One of the common threads of the comments to my recent set of posts about the challenges of keeping a large library and backing it up—both on this blog and in person—was the question of why should one keep so much data around? Surely, it's easy enough to delete off the real cruft and just keep (and archive) the best images, isn't it? Well, the answer to those questions depends on who you are and your situation I think. And it's wrapped up in the bigger debate over whether you should ever delete your images or not.
On the pro side of deleting rejected images are those that say that great photographers are the ones that know how to throw away their bad work. I buy into this thought to a degree. After all, we're always fishing through our libraries to find the best images. And frankly, the percentage of images that one can take that are truly great is surely limited. I'm sure that out of the 70,000 images in my collection, there's only about 1% or so that I'd truly want to take to a desert island with me.
There's also the problem that I don't really trust myself to know what my really good images are until months or even years after I take them. There's a cooling down period that needs to happen. Sure, I can split out the 2 stars from the 4 stars. But the truly good ones? That's harder.
On the con side of deleting rejected images is the argument that you never know what importance a photo might have after the fact. The best example I know of this is the famous Monica Lesson where an archive photo turned out to have enough significance to make the cover of Time Magazine years after it was taken. I can't presume that I have anything in my archives that will be important 10 years from now. But, I do take a lot of photos of rather signifiant technology luminaries at the events I shoot, so you never know.
The real problem, however, is that I would almost need to be banished to a desert island in order to make the time to edit down to the really good 1% of images in my library. Quite frankly, I don't have that kind of time. Ever since I started shooting professionally, I've had less and less time to spend with my archives. Maybe that situation will change if my business experiences a slowdown because of the economy or when I retire. But for now, it's just not going to happen. I've got more images to capture.
Both the economic costs and opportunity costs of spending the time to edit down my library to save some money storing my archive just don't seem to make sense. So, for the time being at least, I'll just keep buying bigger hard drives and shooting more data. And keeping almost all of it as I go even if it means that I'll need to plan for a 6TB solution sooner rather than later.
As always, your situation may warrant a different approach. What do you do on this topic? Feel free to leave a comment!
I shoot a far smaller volume than you usually do, but I trash the definite throw-aways (mistaken shots, flash misfired, forgot to switch back from manual to aperture-priority, you know the kind...). The rest stays, usually.
Good story. I don't delete anything except the very obvious duds for exactly the reasons you state. Best wishes - Harold
My situation as an amateur is obviously different, and so I don't think in terms of economising on the storage. It's just about keeping it manageable... and killing your darlings is part of every art.
I do see your point as a professional though.
It's to your advantage to delete judiciously not because you want to save a few dollars on storage but because you don't want to have to fish through a sea of images trying to find that one you really liked from last Christmas. Keeping mediocre photos around just because it is cheap doesn't seem worthwhile. (Though, I suppose with tools like lightroom making it easy to hide stuff you've decided isn't that good, this might be a somewhat moot point.)
Personally I've started to delete more and more as it actually helps me get more work done.
I found myself continually trawling through the same images, constantly reviewing, looking for one that I could make "special".
However you point about images becoming important after the fact - expecially in event, people and documentary photography - is extremely valid.
Perhaps a compromise therefore is to do the following:-
1. Do your initial trawl through and select the keepers.
2. Archive off the "duds" to CD/DVD and mark it for review a year later.
3. Then delete them.
4. Once a month take the opportunity to review the images you archived off a year ago - they will then be "fresh" to your eyes again and you might approach them from a completely different viewpoint.
Oh, and never ever truly delete them - just stop them from clogging up your current workload.
Just my tuppence worth.
Indeed, removing your duds from active view is part of art and part of keeping things sane. You don't want to wade through everything all of the time.
I'm still working towards a "favorite" strategy for incorporating the philosophy of keeping everything while at the same time keeping most of it out of site. But, obviously, star rankings and the like play a role here. And, of course, you can delete items from your Lightroom library and yet leave them on disk. However, I'm hesitant to pursue that solution as I really do want just one place where everything can be managed.
Sometimes I think everything should start off at two or three stars and I move images up and down from there. That way, one stars and no stars could be hidden from view until you want to surface them.
I only have to manage a few thousand images, but one thing I am getting better at is keywording and captioning. So from that perspective, I don't necessarily agree that the opportunity cost is that much greater in reviewing and deciding to delete.
That said, as most have commented, there's a balance between "total dud" and "well, maybe", especially if you're a natural hoarder like me!
The way that I use to avoid spending time on shots started off by being simply to keyword with a "review" tag. I then moved to using a star rating like James comments. I give a 2* rating only to shots I want to review. I can then exclude them from general viewing by looking at 3* and better. I can also select all 2* and have a review session and make them 1* (archive to DVD and delete), promote them to 3* so they come back into view, or leave them at 2* for another time.
My point of view on this subject is from film-digital side.
I am still a newbie as an amateur photographer but I do remember my self looking at my -currently retired journalist- dad's photographs he took with his Nikon F2, when he was in international summits trying to grab news for national Tv. And there are only 1 or 2 copies from the same scene because he had to write down notes while Gorbachov and Bush are talking infront of the press. He did not have much time neither a digital camera he couldn't shoot 10 frames in a second. But that 1 or 2 photo was very valuable. Not only because there were Bush and Gorbachov but there was only 1 or 2 photo from that day in his hands after so many years. But valuable.
Its like gold you know. The less you have the more valuable. So I take this as a way out philosophy and try to delete as more as I can and just trying to leave the ones which I think best.
Just my point of view. And wanted to share my opinion.
Guys, you sound more like fisherman than artists/photomakers.
I have still problems coping with digital, nothing compares with large format film, neverless i am trying , working very hart to learn digital.
Anyway, when i have a shooting of people, I use now digital, but at the end delete 95% of the shots. My mind is set on a picture, I don't keep many of the fishes. Except if they are really good.
So I prefere deleting, if I need something new, I shoot it.