Do you save your "rejected" photos?

[digitaldog]

<p>While storage is cheap, one issue I find is the size of location drives. That is, while back in the office, I can have huge drives that contain all my Raw's and LR data, I often want to take the library on location and that means a buss powered portable drive. Currently I believe they max out at about 500gigs. I only want on library until such a time that LR barfs on too many images. I'm not close to that amount even if you believe those who say that limit is in the 100,000 image range. Multiple libraries don't work for me because I find that when looking for images, its always in the other library. If such a time comes that LR could open multiple libraries at once, I might change this tactic. So, considering the size of even DNGs off my 5DMII, and the limit on portable drives, I have no issues tossing images I'm sure are losers. </p>

[brent_davidson]

<p>I wonder how everyone ends up with so many shots they want to possibly delete. I think maybe its time to re-evaluate how you shoot. Unless i am taking shots of fast action, like drag racing, I dont end up with with many OOF shots... just because you can take 6 fps doesnt mean that you have to and if one of those shots is the "keeper" then maybe focus on only snapping that one or maybe two shots of your subject. </p>

<p>Only my two cents. I keep everything... </p>

[lesterphoto]

<p>Too many crappy images clog my mind, so I only like to keep the winners (remind me again before I buy another hard drive!)<br /> The only time I keep all my images is vacation trips.</p>

[bms]

<p>Used to keep more then thought: what the heck. The bad, the boring, the missess... gotta go. I keep most images when I shoot an event or such, but otherwise, I do not see much point. I keep a DVD and hard drive copy, so that adds up. Pls, I do a digital contact sheet, as I still like to look at a real image, and it helps me find stuff that is sitting in thecloset.</p>

[thomas_sullivan]

<p>"...With storage getting cheaper, it is more expensive to take the time to cull than to leave the files on the drive..."......exactly. The time it would take me to cull out the rejects, I could edit, and probably print, every keeper on a particular shoot. And I'm talking an intelligent well thought out culling............not the gut reaction one.</p>

<p>Seriously, at $150 for a 1TB external hard drive, and say I get around 120,000 RAW Canon 5D files on that (you would get more, but that's a low estimate just for arguements sake).........that's 1/8th of 1 cent USA per file. And say my time is worth a cheap $20/hr....I'd have to delete 16000 images an hour. That's 4.5 images a second.......just to break even. If that's expensive storage space...I'll pay it.</p>

<p>Hope I got all that math right ;-) still early for me.</p>

[hal_edmonds]

<p>Am I missing something? I put my questionable shots on a disk. Is this not a good idea?<br>

Hal</p>

[mattb1]

<p>Unfortunately, yes. Even have thousands of bad film images. Just can’t seem to part with even a bad image.</p>

[peter_wang6]

<blockquote>

<p>Seriously, at $150 for a 1TB external hard drive, and say I get around 120,000 RAW Canon 5D files on that (you would get more, but that's a low estimate just for arguements sake).........that's 1/8th of 1 cent USA per file. And say my time is worth a cheap $20/hr....I'd have to delete 16000 images an hour. That's 4.5 images a second.......just to break even. If that's expensive storage space...I'll pay it.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>But how much time are you taking to search through and decide which of those images you want to print to begin with? If I've got that many images, I *have* to be able to pick some to edit. You also have to consider that as the data ages, you need to migrate it and keep it current. I've got really old images that have been organized using old programs, and it would have been much easier to migrate them into my current system and formats if I had just kept the ones I cared about.</p>

[kris-bochenek]

<p>like most of people here I delete only total garbage like blured, wrong WB, over or totally underexposed, and keep the rest , I have two 500Gb external harddrives and I don't shoot professionally so thats plenty enough for me.</p>

[danbliss]

<p>Keep them all... On occasion I have gone back to old photos that I originally thought were "bad" and then realized that I could work with them. Disk space is cheap (A few months ago I bought a 1.5TB disk for less than $150, probably cheaper now). Finding an interesting shot... priceless. Of course, you should feel free to delete all your photos if you like. They are your photos, and there is no right or wrong here. -Dan</p>

[richard_martin10]

<p>Get rid of them! I have been an avid race car photographer for nearly 40 years. There is a lot of wasted shots when you have this kind of photographic interest and came to this conclusion years ago; that a crappy picture in 1975 is a crappy picture in 2009! Put your best foot forward and don't worry about trying to save maginal or junky pictures, it just takes away from your good ones.</p>

[imadkhan]

<p>Glad to see I am not the only one who tends to keep all the pics, except for the bad ones of course. Just starting out and always thought that it is better to hold on to the good and bad ones, one can learn from both and perhaps find some use for the not so good ones.</p>

[jeffrey_aiello_photography]

<p>I'm big on deleting.. I delete, delete and delete some more!</p>

[ifti]

<p>I keep tje keepers and " May good posibility" caregoty. Of the onse I keep I save their raw as well. Rest are deleted.</p>

[kathyb]

<p>I delete the really bad ones in camera. The rest go on my hard drive to be sorted later. There are some that I consider that technology or newly acquired skills may be able to improve in the future so I keep those. On average I hold on to 20-30 percent of what I save to my computer.</p>

[mt4x4]

<blockquote>

<p>And you never know when a photo you thought was junk might turn out to be important later. The most obvious example of this is Dirck Halstead's photo of Clinton hugging Monica Lewinsky:</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It is also important to note that he was shooting on film and thus retained the negatives/slides. This was a time when many PJ's were going over to digital, and I remember Dirck making a comment (not in the article you link, but another) about how if he had been shooting digital, he probably would have deleted the photo.<br /> <br /> Here is a quote from the article that I found interesting:<br>

"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. "<br /> </p>

[mt4x4]

<p>EDIT: He did also make the comment in the linked article. What I meant was that I had seen the comments in other articles.<br /> <br /> <br /> As far as the OP goes, I keep almost everything, except the real botches like OOF, leaving camera on manual and forgetting to dial in my exposure, etc. I can't count how many times I have gone back to an image folder and found more images I liked that I had not flagged as keepers first run.</p>

[peter_ferling]

<p>I have to agree with digital and technology making selection/rejection easier.</p>

<p>I shoot several projects a week, and I use Lightroom to manage it all. I have two databases, a master for the keepers, and I start a new one for each project (which literally flies). Using shortcuts keys I can plow through 1000 pics in minutes. If I like one, it gets the "B" key and goes into quickpic. I only spend a few moments per shot. It has to hit me, or the client whom is also watching.</p>

<p>I then revisit the quickpics and rate, with the obvious junk out of the way, I'm now looking for my best. I then select the ones with no rating and delete them. Bye-bye, they won't be missed. I won't remember them. I feel no pain. I import the selects into my master database.</p>

<p>I have a friend whom shoots races, and he describes the dilemma of having stacks upon stacks of boxes of unorganized negs, prints, and slides. He just bought LR and I feel his pain. Scanning can be a lonely life. Choosing will be a task. Each neg will be hands on, and certainly conjur memories. Other than technically bad shots, he might keep'em all.</p>

<p>I have relatives whom threatened to bring me their negatives and help digitize. I plan to buy scanners as gifts.</p>

<p>To answer the OP more directly, if you keep it, it's a select.</p>

[dan_south]

<p>I mark my keepers with ratings stars, but I don't delete the rest of the images. Later on, it's not uncommon to discover that I preferred one of the alternate shots.</p>

<p>I'm a very harsh critic immediately after capture when I'm prone to compare images to a set of pre-shot expectations rather than rate them for their own merit. Weeks or months later when I've forgotten those expectations, when I've lost track of all of the fussy little technical issues that didn't quite work out as planned, when the mosquito bites and blisters and extreme weather have faded from memory, I can sit back and appreciate each image for what it is and what it has to offer.</p>

<p>Deleting files early in the review process? That's a very bad idea for anyone who's half as impulsive as I am.</p>

 

[jim kerr]

<p>I did with film, but not for very long with digital......Jim</p>

[vancouverphotographer]

<p>I'm a pack rat and keep everything even though I am shooting RAW. But I tend to put everything aside then make a copy of it in another folder and then just look at and edit the copy which will contain significantly fewer images than the original. Even with the sheer volume that I shoot (I probably even rival the pros that shoot constantly) I find that I only have a couple external hard drives even though I have duplicate copies of many files.</p>

[gopal1]

<p>i delete the frustrated ones, otherwise i keep many of them for experimenting with design softwares...that i found very useful.</p><div></div>

[jstarks]

<p>I keep them...you never know what some a little imagination can do!<br>

Jesse</p>

[r_johnston]

<p>"Keepers" will vary with the individual, as in experience or creativity and photoshop (formerly darkroom) expertise... In the early years back in 1937 I'd have 3-4 per 20 exposure roll. (9-20 per hundred) After graduating from NYI of Photography that went up to 16-20 per 20 exposure roll. Today rejects are even lower, as all are carefully composed in the frame, seldom do I even crop an image much.<br>

The more experience or knowledge you have, the fewer the mistakes and you just automatically create better images. Now my only rejects are usually almost exact shots of the same subject, where one may be slightly better than the other.<br>

But, still I keep them, for you never know what may befall an image. Files can be corrupted on a HD, a piece of magnetic media can flake off as the drive ages, etc... So even virtually exact duplicates of good shots in my opinion are worth saving.</p>

<p> </p>

[stevenseelig]

<p>I save everything because they are all perfect!))) lol... seriously, I delete the really bad ones sometimes. Occasionally, one that is very low on my 'keeper' list, someone would like to have a copy....and it is a great feeling to provide it to them and also I keep because of the time it would take me 2-3 months after a shoot to decide which ones to keep or toss. On the other hand, I use Aperture for workflow and when I pull up the project, I only see my keepers anyway. The rest are transparent to me, unless I want to dig for them a bit.</p>