To ruthlessly edit or leave 'as is'?

[john clark]

<p>Like many of you, I have seen my photographic output increase markedly since going digital. To begin with, I would keep every photo I had taken, even the slightly out of focus ones or ones which simply didn't 'work'.</p>

<p>However, thousands of images down the line I've started ruthlessly editing out the old stuff, and it's liberating (both in a creative sense and in a 'freeing up of disk space' sense).</p>

<p>I was wondering how others did this - do you figure that disk space is really cheap and therefore keep everything, or do you trim down to only the best images, or somewhere inbetween. Has anyone changed tack on this (like me) or perhaps regretted being so ruthless with the editing? </p>

<p>Ta,</p>

<p>John</p>

[ellis_vener_photography]

<p>Jay Maisel , http://www.jaymaisel.com, a vigorously profilic shooter and notoriously rigorously ruthless editor, gave me this piece of advice recently: "Edit tightly but when you are down to the the best two or three versions of a subject, you are close enough." Years ago he taught me a system of going through a take at least 3 times, each time culling out out the ones that aren't good enough. it is easy to spot the great from the bad or even the good from the bad but each step gets progressly harder as you narrow down the range of choices. It is also important to put some time , a few days perhaps sometimes longer, between the time of the taking of the pictures and the final editing step.</p>

[CharlesBecker-Toronto]

<p>I remember reading something years ago to the effect that an amateur shoots 100 pictures and keeps 100 whereas a professional shoots 100 and keeps 3 or 4. I have always been pretty ruthless about my editing regardless of whether it was film or digital and I agree with Ellis' comments about going through them 3 times though having said that, I found when I went through my slide collection last year I had kept a lot that I really shouldn't have. Digital frees me up to take more shots but I continue ruthless editing. cb</p>

[patricklavoie]

<p>1_ edit more agressively<br>

or<br>

2_buy more hard drive</p>

<p>No secret there...people often keep to many underexposed, over exposed, out of focus, etc..for nothing.<br>

On a pro photoshoot, whe first put the image in a contact sheet format let say 4x3 frame, so whe see 12 frame at a time. From there quickly select or tag with 1 star the one that grab our attention. When the 80 frame are done, whe only keep on screen the 18 select let say. From there i put all of them fit to screen and add a 2 star to those who are the one whe prefer in that batch. In the end, 3-4 image survive, i open them in a contact view or compare mode and select the 1rst and second choice.<br>

Those will be what whe keep to work for the campaing, put them aside in another folder call SHOT01_SELECT. Whe do this for all the other shots during the day (normally 8-12 different)<br>

In the end i then only have let say 10 final shot that the art director and me approved that the client will see, 10 second choice in case of, and a lot of scrap that will be kept until the campaing is print and finished..then be trash and forget.<br>

It took us around 10min to do this editing per shot, during the day. Save a lot of time after, save a lot of disk space also. And the client doestn have to see all the frame; he pay us to get nice image, not to see zillion of them and get lost in the selection : )</p>

<p>_____________</p>

<p>On the other hand, my personal image are less strictly edit, just trash asap all the bad exposure, out of focus, blank frame and other problem shot that migth be there. Then i select the best of them with a color code but keep all the rest in case in need some sky, or element / exposure of another shot (i often shoot sky, vertical, horizontal, sun and other feature like that to replace a problem part on my family image : ) I also think before shothing " do i find that image good enough to be capture?" and before putting my CF card in my MAc i also review the image on the camera window and start trashing some of them already.</p>

[garydem]

<p>i culkl out ANY pics that have anything seriously wrong with them in a first pass using windows picture and fax viewer. this eliminates about half. then durring pp any others that do not meet up to my standards are also culling out. probably another 10-20%.<br>

the one thing i do without fail, and i do not see or hear about many others doing it. this is to selective and carefull about what i am shooting, i did this when i shot my slides for m32years, as well. i never go into the field and just push the shutter endlessly to get more pics. i determine what i want to shoot hoiw i want to shoot and the compostion of that scene. then i take the shot. doing this i extremely rarely ever crop since i have done this in the field during my composing. also, i am getting 95% or better right on exposure and wb. so in all i do not have a lot of dud shots that i will be pitching. i will at max even on a shooting trip take perhaps 200 shots over a 2 day trip. i would expect no more than 5-8 to have anything wrong with them technically and none will need cropping. that was already done in the camera; is called composition. i do not even remeber a singke day, over my 38yrs of slr/dslr shooting, when i have shot over 100 images in a day. this is because i have mentally eleiminated all the shot i would have deleted later simply by not taking them.<br>

what i have shot in the field is multiples of each scene-using differnt zoom amounts, slightly different positions, landscape or portrait, different lenses. so when i cull out i am actually deleteing the unwanted shots of a group, selecting the one pic that show what i think is the best of the scene.</p>

<p> </p>

[scott_ferris]

<p>It totally depends. If it is my personal stuff then I will edit, I don't want 20 pictures of Auntie Flow, if it is work I don't, I keep almost everything (if exposure and focus are ok). This is a good explanation why.</p>

<p>http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2008/08/28/to-delete-or-not-to-delete-that-is-the-the-question/#more-295</p>

<p>And here is the key for me</p>

<p>"Look at Dirck Halstead - a former Time Magazine photographer. His illustrious career of fantastic images has come down to one image - that was buried in a slide sheet deep in some abyss. Remember the Monica Lewinsky photograph - her embracing Bill Clinton? <br>

<em>“When the Lewinsky story broke, all these organizations started to go through their files, and found nothing. </em><br>

<em></em><br>

<em>I hired a researcher, and she started to go through the piles of slides in the light room. After four days, and more than 5,000 slides, she found ONE image, from a fund-raising event in 1996. “</em> <br>

Well - needless to say, Dirck never would have known that his career would come to be in many ways defined by that one image - one that many of us would have likely “thrown in the bin” had we wanted to save slide sheets, or in our days hard drive space… I’d be surprised if not every single one of you hasn’t already regretted deleting an image at some point already in your careers.<em>"</em> </p>

<p><em><em>Take care, Scott.</em> <br /> </em> </p>

[Robin Smith]

<p>I am ruthless, ruthless. It really does yourself no favors keeping the 2nd raters. There are a few sentimental ones I keep, but I keep them to myself. I agree very much with Ellis's point about time. Editing just after a shoot is often the worse time to do it - you are emotionally attached to the images. Give it a few months and you will recognise the poor ones much easier. If there really are 5 equally good ones - I would probably edit it down to one single one. I am not a professional so this is not business. If I was a professional I would edit less I think, since my taste is not necessarily the client's taste.</p>

[steven_ayers]

<p>I go through and keep what's useful, or in some cases, a photo that isn't great but makes me laugh, or has personal sentiment or whatever and keep it. Otherwise, if a photo doesn't cut it, it gets cut. </p>

[godfrey]

<p>I save nearly all RAW original captures, just in case, on a backup drive. Sometimes otherwise useless captures make good fodder for creating textures and such. <br /><br /> What persists in my working archive has to survive at least four to five rounds of cutting and grading. <br /><br /> Godfrey</p>

[g dan mitchell]

<p>I'd edit, but not ruthlessly.</p>

<p>There is generally no good reason to keep out of focus or really poorly exposed photographs - though I can think of a few exceptions to this idea.</p>

<p>However, I frequently rediscover photographs that I passed over on my first pass - and sometimes they end up being really fine images. So I do not generally trash an image just because it may not strike me as exciting the first time around.</p>

<p>Yes, disk space is cheap.</p>

<p>Dan</p>

[don_e]

<p>First pass: delete crap<br>

Second pass: Can I imagine printing this? If the answer is "no", then copy to dvd, delete from computer.<br>

What is left is what I work with, film or digital.</p>

<p> </p>

[dlw]

<p>As a general rule, unless it's pure trash I keep everything I shoot for archival purposes. That said, I do edit very ruthlessly for the final product whether it's for myself or someone else. When I was in school, I had the luxury of taking all the time I wanted to edit and really didn't edit very tightly. That all changed when I was assigned to the U.S. Air Force Combat Camera Squadron at Charleston AFB. Not long after arriving, I was looking over some slides I had shot a day or two before when our ranking photojournalist came over to the light table. He had 5 or 6 boxes of slides another PJ had sent back from wherever he was. The PJ had not edited any of them nor was there a cover sheet or captions, just raw film. Our senior PJ, being totally annoyed, set about editing. It was an educational experience for me. He went through all those slides in well under 3 minutes. He separated them into piles of "keepers" and "crap". Out of all those slides he had maybe 12 "keepers". That's how I learned to edit. </p>

[kolaczan]

<p>If it is something important (big trip or grizzly bear or something) I ruthlessly edit. Even then I don't keep seriously flawed pics unless there is something truly important in them. Hard-disk space is cheap but who wants to have to wase through all the fuzzy photos to get a the ones you really want?</p>

[david_henderson]

<p>I view deletion as a cathartic process that much improves my perception of whats left. That said, like Ellis I will rarely go as far as only keeping one shot of a good subject, and the best two or three will suit me fine too.</p>

<p>My first pass is in camera where each day I will go through what I've taken and typically lose maybe 20%.</p>

<p>The rest get onto the computer and auto backed up onto an external hard drive, but the main copy gets worked in in Lightroom until on average 40% of it has gone. I don't bother deleting these same images from the backup- but then I hope rarely to have to look at the backup anyway so it isn't likely to offend me there, and drive space is cheap<br>

The remaining 60% approx gets edited down to about 20% which is what gets shown to Stock Agencies, fuels presentations that I might show to Camera Clubs or photographer friends, and the few that I have printed. The other 40% that I keep but don't use peturbs me. They should probably go but I'm not convinced I should be making irrevocable decisions (well nearly) within a month of taking them. I do have a similar collection of many thousands of "second line" medium format transparencies I never look at either, so my track record's not good on these. I think I'd find it easier to cull if I did more commercial/event/portrait type work done purely for professional purposes. </p>

[vrankin]

<p>Less than technically acceptable go out first, then in a second round, those that would need an explanation. A memorable photo shouldn't need an accompanying excuse from the photographer for its existence. It should have stopping power on its own, so that an objective outside viewer will be drawn into the photo's interpretation of itself.</p>

[evphotography]

<p>I agree with Ellis Vener's post, that is probably the best method for editing. Yes hard drive space is getting pretty cheap, but if an image is technically flawed for some reason, over exposed, underexposed, blurry or what ever reason, no reason to hold on to those.</p>

[john clark]

<p>This is excellent stuff, folks, thanks for the comments. I'm going to take the post on a bit of a twist now, and throw in a curveball...</p>

<p>Which is to say: do you take into account the possibility that an otherwise non-keeper image might actually form the basis of something greater given some work in post-production? For example, what might appear to be a run-of-the-mill landscape might take new life if converted to B&W and subsequently tinted? Or the pleasing face in the crowd caught serendipitously on an otherwise bland shot (which could then be heavily cropped on a modern digital SLR, say)?</p>

<p>For now, I'm still trying to edit at least the obvious 'this doesn't work on any level' shots - but anything which makes me pause remains for now. Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow or the next day... ;-)</p>

[don_e]

<p>"Which is to say: do you take into account the possibility that an otherwise non-keeper image might actually form the basis of something greater given some work in post-production?"</p>

<p>No. I"ve looked at the possibilities already during the triage. A good image goes to dvd, as I wrote, if I do not think I'll want to print it. I don't delete them because you never know when a photo might turn out to be significant in the future. But crap is crap, and those are deleted.</p>

 

[don_e]

<p>There are exceptions. If you have only one photo of something or someone that is not a good photo, but feel strongly enough about the subject to want to reshoot, hold onto it until you do. I took a snap of a friend as we were walking through a city park. The focus was soft. I decided to do a portrait when I could get around to it, and studied the shot I had to think through how I would do it. She died suddenly and I never got to reshoot. I'm glad I kept what I had.</p>

<p>Then there are photos so bad that they're worth keeping. Mine are collected together in a set I call When Decisive Moments Go Awry.</p>

<p> </p>

[garydem]

<p>"Which is to say: do you take into account the possibility that an otherwise non-keeper image might actually form the basis of something greater given some work in post-production"<br>

john c-absolutely NOT. i put a lot of care into the shooting of the image in the field. so when it gets to my pc i expect to see an image that can stand on its own without pp(except for sharpening). i am currently getting correct exposure and wb on at least 95%(sometimes 100%) of my pics, and since i believe in composing in the camera i very rarely crop. so for me the image is justabout the finished product in the pc when it get there. this is why i can cull immediately on getting to the pc. i do disagree with the above replyers who say do not cull immediately. i take the opposite view-i know what i was trying to get in the field i know the technical conditions of the shoot; so, the question is did i get that? the best time to do this is when your memory is fresh. besides, my opinion of a bad pic is not going to get better now or a week from now.<br>

i would still advise culling out the duds as soon as possible. they are simply going to take up hard drive space. and you are going to shoot more pics in the future. my thinking is to cull out not just ruthlessly but to the point of fanaticsm. if you keep your best then this becomes the target to which you have to shoot that quality to in the future. it will over time make you a better photographer and not just a shutter snapper. this why in the field i put some effort into selecting what i want to take a pic of, to make the shot worthwhile, and not just push the shutter button. i think about what the subject is what effect i am trying to get and then how to do it. then if it meets all the above and is worthwhile do i take the picture. thus in the field i am already culling out the shots by simply not taking them in the first place.</p>