How many percentage of pictures do you keep ?

[alan_myers]

I guess it depends upon what you mean by "keep".

 

When I shoot events, my "keeper" rate would be the images that pass muster and get put up online and/or into catalogs for sale. There I average close to 50%, sometimes a little higher or a little lower, depending upon a lot of factors like how challenging lighting conditions were, etc. I shoot about 1100-1200 images on a typical day at an event.

 

For my own fine art work, I probably print less than 2%, while less than 1% actually get offered for sale. I might take 200 shots of a subject, but end up printing 4 to see how they look on paper, and finally end up with one that's the best of those four.

 

If asking what percentage I archive, it's probably closer to 80-90%, maybe even more. I've got six hard drives in this computer right now, a shelf unit full of DVDs with thumbnail catalogs and four file cabinets filled with tens of thousands of film images going back 30 years.

 

I've often thought about getting really ruthless and trashing a lot of older images. But, whenever I start to go through them I seem to end up finding ones I want to play around with in Photoshop and try printing!

[dave_holland]

The ratio of good photos to losers for me is ~10%, unchanged over the past 40 years. However my definitions and standards have risen dramatically over the decades.

 

Dave

[peza]

interesting topic and even more interesting responses showing how big is difference between people. Despite shooting digital, I most of the time keep the "slide shooting" style.

 

I keep some 70-80% of the shots, depending on subject and shooting conditions, which alters shooting style. Exhibition grade images are just some 2-5% of all.

 

I basically rate images 1-5 and do not keep anything in 1-2 range, 3 are only rare subjects, usually with focus error or some other major problems, 4 **** are well executed images in terms of subject, lighting, focus, which just would not cut it for exhibition and than are the ***** five stars :)