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Are you a picture hoarder?


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I have been trying to clean house on my hard drives to rid myself of photos I know are not personally or professionally useful.  Some people hoard stuff, I hoard photos. It can be a crappy out of focus shot but for some reason I have a hard time deleting it. I have subjects that I sat and took about 20 shots of, used a couple but couldn't bring myself to delete any of the rest, even though they are almost duplicates of the ones I used.

 

With each shot occupying 50MB of space on the hard drive, I tell myself not only is it stupid to keep the ones that will never see the light of day, but I just give myself more to plow through if searching for the quality stuff.

 

Any of your photo hoarders? What is your criteria for deciding what to keep and what to trash?

 

Jill

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I'm afraid I keep the lot - not so much because I want to hoard them but because I dont seem to have the time (or cant be bothered) to get rid of them - Hard drive space is very cheap these days - cheaper than my time!

 

Kumar

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For my stock work, if it's not earning money with an agency (other than similars from an agency edit), it's gone. I guess it's an old habit from slide film days when keeping the also-rans was expensive - medium format card mounts and sleeves were not cheap if you used them for the fluff. The exceptions are model shoots, where I do a looser edit for studio stuff as I can often find a use for the images in composites after a number of years - head shots are usefull for CGI work.

 

My client work really adds some GB to my archives and there, after the client has finished with the images, I will only keep their edited high res. I simply cannot keep shoots of 10-20GB that have no commercial use. Also since they are backed up serveral times, there's a lot of time when it comes to adding in a new external drive. There's also the issue of the size of the catalog in LR, I need to keep that to reasonable numbers - trying to keep below 100k.

 

When I decided all my slides were scanned, those that had some value - I eventually also got rid of those. No fun carting them between recent moves.

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I'm afraid I keep the lot - not so much because I want to hoard them but because I dont seem to have the time (or cant be bothered) to get rid of them - Hard drive space is very cheap these days - cheaper than my time!

 

Kumar

 

I'm with you. I delete the worst in a quick first pass: unsharp, terrible framing (happens quite a bit with sport/action), poor exposure. I will junk a few more during the selection processes and post-production. The unselected I keep because like Doc I don't have the time and I have reused a little stuff years later. Storage ios pretty cheap but then I am not doing 10Gbor more client shoots.

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After uploading images from the SD card, I make my selection and everything else goes.

 

1. The selection are processed and afterwards, any Tiffs are converted to jpgs and kept with the RAWs. 

 

2. Completed Capture One session is moved to the NAS drive for storage and backed up weekly to a second NAS drive. 

 

3. At the end of the year, all C1 sessions for that year are copied to Blu Ray disks (2 copies) and stored in two locations. The NAS copy is compressed/archived on the 12tb NAS with Raid5 to protect against drive failure. These ones are still easily accessible.

 

If I kept all images I would need a warehouse to store the Blu-Rays  :P  So on that basis, I take what I need and make the important ones as safe as possible.

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I only keep the orginal RAW and the C1/LR edit parameters on the basis I can always recreate the jpeg, tiff or whatever format, whatever size when I need it.

 

Same here. I only keep a jpg for the times I need to do work in PS that results in a tiff or psd file. C1 sessions are handy as they are like mini catalogues just for that shoot.

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I keep all my RAWs and the jpgs I upload to Alamy. I am making myself get rid of the crap that I can't seem to let go of. The more photos I take, the more I realize that I have to start filtering out the lousy stuff for the good stuff. 

 

I will get this done!

 

Jill

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I've gotten rid of most my digital stuff from before 2008 when I was using 6 and 8 mp cameras. I went through some old files from 2009 and 2010 on exhd's and found a lotta shots that I over looked because I was in a hurry and some with poor color or not exposed quite right. A little photoshop and fixed 'em right up. There are some great shots I would have thrown out, glad I didn't. I have a ton of 35mm and 6x7 negatives I need to scan and digitize some day. That's a whole nother story!

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I do an initial delete after my shoots but I too am guilty off too many similar photos that I keep.

Eventually I'll go thru my external drive and edit out what has not sold or has no use for composite images.

 

L

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Jill of the North,

 

If a click of the shutter misfires I want to be rid of the result, not hoard it.  I don't shoot a lot of similar images, and I surely don't keep or submit a lot of similar images. I like the result of clicking Delete in LR; it gives me the option to delete from the disk (HD). Gone! My workflow is still RAW > tiff > jpeg. Once the jpeg is accepted by the agency, I delete the tiff. Tiffs take up a lot of space, and I feel I should keep the RAW files. I delete most RAW files that don't get on an agency for sale. I also keep the accepted jpegs; they take up little space and they are all edited and finished. 

 

And I have a room full of "stuff" I want to toss . . . at least half of it. I used to own 35 safari jackets. I now have just one . . . black silk, made in Rome. I can't imagine wearing it again, but I can't part with it either. 

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I pretty much keep everything.

 

So do I and it's a bad habit. I do try and delete in camera, time permitting. But then delete very few that reach the hard disk stage, I see it as a record of where I have been and what I have seen.

 

Regards

Craig

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Yes and No.  I have quite a few filing cabinets full of carefully captioned and tiny printed labeled trannies which also exist as a database which took so many years to complete, I'm not sure I can bear to chuck them. Later, It took about two years to select and scan what seemed the best. But there might be a case for a review one day to select some more.


 


But new digital stuff? No hoarding there!  I reckon to edit the contents of an SD Card and bin 50% immediately. After opening & saving as TIFFs and a little basic work, I'll wait till the next day and chuck out at least another 50%. We used to keep huge numbers as "camera originals" or very similars as clients wanted to be sent originals. It's a no-brainer now with digital. Why would you keep anything second-rate? They aint going to improve with age!


 


But "legacy " gear is another matter; guilty as charged! There is probably someone out there eager to lug that 67 Pentax gear around. Or polish up my collection of Canon FD stuff and sit it on a display shelf. But I just don't get 'round to doing anything about it.


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Have, in recent years, been cured of picture hoarding, and have even gone back through and deleted similars or junk out of old stuff that will never be used.

 

Currently delete in camera if more than one shot taken to optimise exposure or not sharp. Keyword in LR, then delete similars, and those that I don't want to use. Store raw files and JPGs, not TIFFs.

 

I tend to procrastinate over a series of indifferent shots when I should just delete the lot, the good ones generally stand out and are self selecting.

 

Less rigorous over family and friends photos, but still delete the junk.

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I only delete in camera if I fired the shutter by mistake or had a gross setting error (or on very rare occasions I need the card space). I don't have automatic review switched on and rarely chimp - very occasionally will check if I am working in difficult light, suspect I missed my framing or there was possible intrusion into the frame.

 

I try to adopt the same disciplines I used with film rather than shoot willy-nilly and then spend time at the computer agonising over which is the best of multiple, essentially identical shots. I started doing it after that initial enthusiasm of adopting digital with no direct cost per exposure and shooting too freely, even thoughtlessly (didn't improve my results!). I have tightened up even further in the last year.

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After downloading from the flashcard and doing several passes removing the rubbish, I do hoard the rest of the RAW files.  I'm trying to be more ruthless when I know I already have a lot of one subject, and when revisiting the photos looking for new stuff to publish, I do delete the rubbish.  The only exception are precious photos captured in exotic locations (like Antarctica, Chile, Peru) and then even the rubbish remains as a sort of souvenir! :rolleyes:  Disk drive manufacturers must love me! :)

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I keep absolutely everything and always have. From the age of eleven I have kept every negative I ever took (close to 400,000 now, all formats from 35mm to 10" x 8"  and still rising). I also keep every RAW digital file. (I think of those as digital negatives). All filed and indexed of course so they can be easily found.

 

Of course I rely on print sales, some from images / negs many years old so I have to. Some of my negatives have been worth many, many thousands of pounds in print sales. Problem is I wish I could always predict at the time which ones! Some lay dormant for years then sales from a gallery come in unexpectedly.

 

I also believe in the notion that we never know now what may be of interest in years to come, so we need to edit, or not, with the future social history in mind. 

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I tend to be pretty brutal and delete as much as practicable as soon as possible. In cases where I no longer need original RAW files I will keep the high def jpegs. 

 

Periodically I clean out old RAW files when I can no longer see a use.

 

I guess the nature of your business will determine the useful life for storage.

 

dov

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A word of caution.  I go through and pick out the best of the lot, delete the rest. But I may save 2 or 3 "best" and only upload one.  This practice has given me material for FAA.  Maybe 3 shots of a bird perched in a blossoming tree. The sharp one gets uploaded, but maybe image #2 is the best pose, but slightly unsharp.  I can do things with #2 with various filters, textures, painting processes that rescues the image and makes it viable for FAA.  Thank heavens I saved some of those, even from 2005.

I used to save every Tiff I made alongside the RAW on my HDs.  I have been going back when I have a bit of time and turning those Tiffs into jpegs.  Frees up so much space.  The reason to save the jpegs?  I have "-AL" in the filename to let me know that images was uploaded to Alamy.  Otherwise, I might not know which has and which hasn't. Yes, I do have folders of jpegs uploaded, but would rather not be looking at a folder of images and have to go back and forth between it and the Alamy folder.  The way I do it, one folder, one look, I know. Sometimes I fly through a folder and pick out certain images to develop and move on.  Later I go back and inspect a little closer and see there are some viable ones I missed.  This way I know which are which.

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Can't say I hoard photos preferring just to keep a few images from any set. Neither do I keep Jpegs after uploading to Alamy. So I have the RAWS and occasional Tiffs when images have been further edited in PS. Actually, in my case, photography mirrors possessions as I'm not much of a hoarder at all.

 

Anthony.

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Further to my post above. I actually wrote about keeping photographs in my blog: http://peteslandscape.blogspot.co.uk/ The entry for 21/02/2014

 

I know it was mainly aimed at family photographs but much contemporary stock photography can be likened to mass observation. We never know what may be of interest to future social historians.

 

In the family snaps I reproduce in my blog, the main interest for me may be the immediate family. For others, it is probably the clothing, hairstyles, the family transportation even! Those years immediately after WW2 saw great changes in society and the images of that time are witness to that. I'm glad I have those pictures safe. If my Dad had a digi camera then he may well have deleted half of them and i think it would have been a loss. 

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