Photo Culling

[royd63uk]

Hi all
As I have progressed in photography I noticed that as time went on I have been more ruthless in culling/deleting images before (and after) processing.
Images I would have kept I now quite often dispose of, probably gone from deleting 10-20percent to sometimes now 80 percent. Even though with the Canon R5 I get many more good images.

Has anyone else found the same thing?

 

[MikeZ]

In the dozen or so years that I have been shooting digital, I've deleted very few images. I'm not sure why I'm reticent to do so - maybe deep down inside I feel that I can salvage the bad shots (I've never tried), or that there is some "history" or emotion buried within those shots. The downside clearly is that I have several LARGE external drives and a stack of DVDs loaded with shots I will probably never look at.

 

[Copterdoc]

Hi all
As I have progressed in photography I noticed that as time went on I have been more ruthless in culling/deleting images before (and after) processing.
Images I would have kept I now quite often dispose of, probably gone from deleting 10-20percent to sometimes now 80 percent. Even though with the Canon R5 I get many more good images.

Has anyone else found the same thing?

I thought this process was difficult at 6 FPS but at 20 is exponentially harder. There is often little time to be more critical and you need to rely on instant first impressions when culling several thousand images. It's a talent that needs to be developed with these machinegun shutters on days mirrorless cameras. There is always a tradeoff. The speed can get you that one great moment in time but that capability comes with the need to be able to judge images in a split second when culling. It helps to have a large High Rez screen to view these on. JMHO

 

[royd63uk]

We are lucky to have such capable cameras, but what comes with that is the need to be more ruthless at what we keep .Especially with so many images taken per second and large files.
It is scary at times though.

 

[dmiller68]

It is a very real and challenging issue. When I did my trip to Alaska to shoot Coastal Brown Bears I took roughly 13,000 pictures over the 4 days with my Canon "R". so that equaled roughly ~500GB-700GB of photos in RAW. Then processing and outputting 100s in several JPG formats for various use cases. You end up with a big data problem. In the end I purged about 4000 photos but still leaves a lot. And probably even bigger issues long term. I went out and bought a new 2TB Macbook pro to replace my 500GB Windows laptop because of space issues (and a new NAS as well). Ultimately there is more I probably can purge just haven't yet. I just got back from the Grand Tetons two weeks ago and took ~3000 photos and another 700 photos this last weekend in a abstract class I took. As we shoot with these large Megapixel cameras the problem grows very quickly. (over 1.1TB already used on my new laptop)

 

[royd63uk]

I think it is an emotional thing also sometimes the image we like best is not always the best in terms of sharpness etc
It is a very difficult thing to have to do.
But drives can be used up very quickly with images we will probably never use

 

[Dave Williams]

I get bored going through a file deciding what to delete. It's easier to just buy a new external hard drive!

 

[royd63uk]

I get bored going through a file deciding what to delete. It's easier to just buy a new external hard drive!

How can you be bored looking through images you took. Why take them in the first place.
You could end up with lots of drives full of images you will never look at!

 

[Dave Williams]

How can you be bored looking through images you took. Why take them in the first place.
You could end up with lots of drives full of images you will never look at!

Yep, you got it! I have lots of files of shots I haven't looked at and I bet I'm not alone. I guess much depends on the subject matter, but if for example I'm using silent shutter on the R5 it's knocking out 20fps, more than I need but each one is minutely different when it comes to freezing the action. A quick check and I have found one I need for my purpose so I could delete the rest BUT there might just be a better one so I keep them for further perusal. If I'm away on a weeks photographic shoot the numbers mount up pretty quickly as you can imagine so yes, there are a lot of images that don't get looked at until a rainy day sometime in the future.
That answers why I take so many, and also why I get bored looking through them deciding what's worth keeping.
I would add though that the adrenaline rush of taking the shot of the action as it happens is where the thrill is, hoping you have captured what you have seen. Post processing and deleting comes nowhere near !

 

[royd63uk]

Indeed, can't argue any of your points.
Photography is great isn't it.

 

[annieseed]

I'm just getting to that point, so far I have just really started deleting images I know I will never use but I have many folders of images I need to go through . I haven't had to buy an external hard drive yet but it won't be long.

 

[Michelle Sampson]

Hi all
As I have progressed in photography I noticed that as time went on I have been more ruthless in culling/deleting images before (and after) processing.
Images I would have kept I now quite often dispose of, probably gone from deleting 10-20percent to sometimes now 80 percent. Even though with the Canon R5 I get many more good images.

Has anyone else found the same thing?

Oh no, I cull the heck out of my photos. I don't want the storage nor do I want to look at photos I wouldn't post. When I load in my photos I pick out the shots I want to concentrate on and remove all others. Then, after editing, I cull those out. I try and keep only four and five star edited photos. LR simply makes it so easy to house clean those photos out. It's like my clothes closet. I don't want it cluttered either, haha!

 

[EricM]

I think that the key is to get to the mindset where you decide what you need to keep - the starred ones rather than deleting the rubbish. Its hard to do but worthwhile.

 

[Greg]

My photography started with film when I was 13 (60 years ago). The whole of my time with film I never had enough money so I could waste frames, everyone was, as far as possible, set up to the best of my ability.

I like being in control of my camera, I use it manually unless I am in a rush. Even now, being digital, I still set up my pictures as if it were analogue I like the process of getting the details right first go. For me the art of photography is the capture. If you don't think this is important. why bother with a stills camera, you might as well have a video camera strapped to your head and film away at all and everything and pick out the odd frame here and there.

Because of my style of photography I have very few pictures i would want to delete. There are times where an exceptional picture has been made from what, at first sight, looks totally useless. To answer the OP, no I don't delete anything, not without giving the frame a good examination for possible potential.

As soo as I can find a picture I was going to delete, its on this forum, i will post a link to it. You can say if it should have been deleted or not.
EDIT:
This is the original photo. I was an accidental shutter release I was not even aiming the camera at anything. https://rfshooters.com/media/imgl2063-jpg.1512/
This is a section of the above picture. https://rfshooters.com/media/imgl2063-jpg.1513/

 

[Dave Williams]

Yep, delete it Greg! We all make accidental shutter actuations, we all take lots of perfectly good ones that are virtual duplicates too. Lots of reason to delete or not but the act of deleting as I previously said can be painfully boring if you have taken multiple images.
I think most of us do actually think about what we are trying to achieve before pressing the shutter button but to be honest you don't always get the time you need if it's action you are capturing.

 

[royd63uk]

Agree, if it's landscape or similar you can take your time.
BIF etc. no chance

 

[DocTex]

Hi all
As I have progressed in photography I noticed that as time went on I have been more ruthless in culling/deleting images before (and after) processing.
Images I would have kept I now quite often dispose of, probably gone from deleting 10-20percent to sometimes now 80 percent. Even though with the Canon R5 I get many more good images.

Has anyone else found the same thing?

Same here. As we get better with our skills, obtain better equipment and more proficient with software, it is natural to have your standards commensurate with all of those increases. The nice thing is that it increases your speed of processing because there are not as many images to process!

 

[DocTex]

Hi all
As I have progressed in photography I noticed that as time went on I have been more ruthless in culling/deleting images before (and after) processing.
Images I would have kept I now quite often dispose of, probably gone from deleting 10-20percent to sometimes now 80 percent. Even though with the Canon R5 I get many more good images.

Has anyone else found the same thing?

Same here. As we get better with our skills, obtain better equipment and more proficient with software, it is natural to have your standards commensurate with all of those increases. The nice thing is that it increases your speed of processing because there are not as many images to process!

 

[Dave Williams]

Bit of a pointless conversation really! Who else cares what we do with our images!!

 

[royd63uk]

Bit of a pointless conversation really! Who else cares what we do with our images!!

Don't read it then

 

[Greg]

Yep, delete it Greg! We all make accidental shutter actuations, we all take lots of perfectly good ones that are virtual duplicates too. Lots of reason to delete or not but the act of deleting as I previously said can be painfully boring if you have taken multiple images.
I think most of us do actually think about what we are trying to achieve before pressing the shutter button but to be honest you don't always get the time you need if it's action you are capturing.

I think you missed the point. A duff picture actually produced, in my opinion, an excellent picture

 

[Copterdoc]

I think you missed the point. A duff picture actually produced, in my opinion, an excellent picture

The difference here is that you "actually looked at the images and made a choice". Some people are ok with building an annex to their home to store all the hard drives full of images they will never look at, much like hoarding. If they were at the very least maintained in an index for searching at a later date maybe but the tremendous amount of clutter will drive most people daffy.

To each his own but I find it a very bad habit to promote unless you are rich.

 

[Dave Williams]

The difference here is that you "actually looked at the images and made a choice". Some people are ok with building an annex to their home to store all the hard drives full of images they will never look at, much like hoarding. If they were at the very least maintained in an index for searching at a later date maybe but the tremendous amount of clutter will drive most people daffy.

To each his own but I find it a very bad habit to promote unless you are rich.

Each of my 4TB external hard drives are smaller than the R5 instruction booklet. Just 2 hold all my photographic memories for the last 15 years. Combined they also cost less than the 128GB CFexpress card inside the camera. I admit to having a back up of each too. All the shots are contained within folders that enable me to find what I'm looking for fairly easily. Fortunately I'm loaded it seems.