OT: Which slides to keep?

[david enzel]

I like to shoot slides and when I edit I find a few clear keepers and

some images that just didn't work. I struggle with the middle

ground. How many should I keep and how many should I toss? Space

over time will become an issue. But I wonder even apart from space

whether I may be doing myself a disservice by keeping as many

mediocre slides as I do as it. A National Geographic photographer

once told me that the way to have a great portfolio is to throw away

the bad ones. Do others struggle with the question of keeping or

tossing the middle group and if so how do you resolve the issue in

your practice?

[david_clark10]

My personal moto is to never keep a bad image or show one to anybody! Out of 36exp you may have up to 10 or less good images, the rest middle ground and bad. Ditch the bad staight away then you can sort through the middle groung getting rid of others that may have slight camera shake, poor exposure and focusing softness. There is no harm in keeping the rest as well as the good, because you never know when you might need it for reference etc.

[ellis_vener_photography]

The bad, the mediocre, and the so=so never get better with time. Jay Maisel has been

shooting for over forty years. He probably has a million keepers. He also has about 36

- 60 million rejects.

[gary_watson]

The more you shoot, the easier it is to cull the crap.By keeping things like composition, background and exposure in mind, you can usually winnow out the "maybe" shots quick. Still, technically sound slides can easily be paralytically boring, so be willing to keep things that communicate something more than your ability to focus and expose accurately.Leave some room for the ambiguous, ironic, and the personal in your "keeper" file.

[todd peach seattle, washi]

If by 'keep' vs. 'toss' you mean throwing away slides, I'd caution against throwing away all but the ugliest. Events have a way of conspiring to make yesterday's 'throw aways' into today's 'I wish I kept those.' If the person in your slides dies an untimely death (been there, done that, glad I held on to those slightly out of focus shots of a vital young woman water-skiing), you'll want them. When a dam is built and floods out your scenic landscapes, you'll want them. A different perspective, I guess.

[pete_su]

Keep the good ones.

 

I put the ones I can't decide about in a big ziplock. This encourages me to throw them

out later, because it's hard to edit slides that are in a ziplock.

[david_h._hartman]

<em>" I'd caution against throwing away all but the

ugliest. Events have a way of conspiring to make yesterday's

'throw aways' into today's 'I wish I kept those." --Todd

Peach <br>

</em><br>

I agree and in some instances agree with first hand experience.

[hique]

I also don't throw away my bad images. I just don't mount them, and keep it together with my negatives. One day I may need them, to prove that one image came from a sequence, to notice mistakes and everything.

[lex_jenkins]

I keep mine - they make fine airgun targets.

[Guest]

David, as you've posted the same question in the Leica forum, will you let us know whether Leica people throw out differently from Nikon people? ;-)<p>FWIW, I shoot for myself, as a hobby, so I don't have a portfolio. I have thrown away lab-mounted slides - but not all - I've taken when drunk. Anything unmounted I keep in the strip(s), regardless of value. It seems silly to keep <I>complete</I> rubbish in mounts and silly to break up strips of unmounted film. That said, I don't throw away that much because a lot of it is personal and documentary rather than shooting for publication.

[ShunCheung]

I am with Ellis on this one. Throw away even the mediocre; they won't get better with time. Hopefully, as a photographer, you will get better over time. So today's mediocre slides will become bad slides down the road. The old slides only remind me that how poor a photographer I used to be.

[rick_campbell]

I keep all my slides in Kodak trays. After 35 years I have around 28 140 slide trays. When I'm really bored I go through them and 'clean house'. There have been a couple of times I've been sorry I tossed something but it's rare. Black and white negatives and all unmounted medium format slides get put in those little cardboard thingies from Light Impressions and stored in a metal cabinet. For some reason I just can't throw away medium format stuff. ;-)

[greglyon]

I had this same dilemma until I read (in a John Shaw book) that if it's too hard to decide, don't throw them away, but don't put them in with the best slides. I now take the best of the best and catalog them. All the rest stay in their original packing in boxes that I rarely look at again. I've occasionally looked back through some of them, nearly all could have been tossed, but it got me to work quickly and only keep out the best.

 

Happy Editing!

[bill_hocker1]

Keep all your slides! - well, except perhaps blanks and accidents. Put the ones you like in albums where you can see them. Let the others remain in their boxes with a note about contents and a date. Many of the slides that I rejected during my first 30 years of picture taking suddenly became usable (some of them spectacularly so) with just a touch of that new-fangled technology, Photoshop. You never know what the future will bring.

[lex_jenkins]

This is a bit off-topic but I'm glad some folks never toss out anything.

 

I just received an old Durst 606 (circa 1964) complete with nearly all the bits and, as a bonus, a couple of strips of 6x6 and 35mm negs. Some of the 35mm negs depict airline employees striking against National Airlines, even a bowling league of airline machinists with protest slogans emblazoned on their bowling shirts, having fun at an alley. If memory serves that strike occurred during the late '60s or very early '70s.

 

Most of the negs appear overdeveloped and too contrasty, but I'm glad they weren't tossed out, as I might have done with my own negs in such condition unless the photos were really important. There might be an interesting bit of history in there.