A Poor Show

[snaarman]

Let me tell you how I normally do things photographically..

I go out for my lunchtime walk on weekdays and take a fair selection of pictures. I come home and have a quick look at the jpeg thumbnails and set about deleting the rejects straight away. Next I open each raw file and develop it, but even at this stage images get rejected and deleted.

I may end up with a small handful of pictures that havn't been deleted. If one of them seems half decent I might upload it here for comment.

So, I delete more than I keep, but what proportion I wonder? Today I've done something different. I've assembled all the pictures I took today and marked the deletd ones with the dreaded red cross. These ones met the recycle bin for various reasons: Exposure, camera shake, composition, repeated shot, just plain boring.. you know the score..

So, here's today's film strip with the rejects.



5 out of 13 avoided the big red button. And out of all this there was only one half decent keeper, and even that isn't too impressive.



So how do you manage? Are you a deleter like me

Pete

[Benedict]

Re: A Poor Show

I never delete anything straight away. First I file the immediate keepers,then anything else I file under a ' look again' folder. If within 3 months I haven't looked at that folder I will delete it - but just sometimes ther are a few that on relection are worth a bit more work ans so it goes on ..

[Zuiko]

Re: A Poor Show

Afraid I don't delete nearly as much as I should - I've got a hard drive full of biosolids!

[Adam Easton]

Re: A Poor Show

I keep all the images. I just copy the ones that I feel have merit in to a new file. sometimes on refection images that I would have deleted I will use.

[Falk]

Re: A Poor Show

Pete, I may delete about as much as you do, BUT - I probably would have came from at least 130 pics and not just 13

[snaarman]

Re: A Poor Show

Pete, I may delete about as much as you do, BUT - I probably would have came from at least 130 pics and not just 13

Ah, I am quite restrained with the shutter button. Perhaps it comes from those years using film, 36 shots and you're finished.

Also developing each picture from raw files makes the process slow, and the prospect of working through 130 shots one by one is a big task...

BTW. That was a good day out, the sun was shining. On a bad day I take 6 or maybe only 3 pictures, and eventually delete them all

Pete

[shirley]

Re: A Poor Show

I am really bad at this. I take lots, mainly because I always think the image which has appears next is better than the one I have just taken and would hate to miss that 'once in a lifetime shot', sadly I have still to take it.

I am just as bad when it comes to keeping/throwing images in PS. I have started to make myself bin at least 10 images each time I go to the computer and delete as many images as a I upload. However I have so many GBs to get through it is having little impact

[snaarman]

Re: A Poor Show

A quick check shows that I kept 1577 pictures from 2010. These are after the weak ones were weeded out - I suspect I probably took about 5000 or so.

How good are those select few? Hmm. Not that good by my standards.

Think of it this way, if you were to make a photobook of last year's pictures for all the world to see, how many pictures would be good enough?

(Don't answer that... )

Pete

PS, the wheat and tree shot did eventully find a home on my photoblog today but only after I had a go at it to make it less bland http://snaarman.blogspot.com/2011/08/crop-ready.html

[George Dorn]

Re: A Poor Show

Snaarman, interesting photoblog you have there. I always feel that it's common amongst 'enthusiast' photographers to be harder on their own photos than other people viewing them are.

On the original post, almost nothing gets deleted from my archive, but they might as well be because anything half decent gets copied into a live directory and the archive gets ignored.

I've only lost important images once and don't intend that to happen again.

[Wee man]

Re: A Poor Show

I think both would go in the book. Seriously I to take lots and then store them and slowly go back and delete, but I still have a disk full of shots which should be binned!

[sapper]

Re: A Poor Show

Recently I took a trip to the smoke on a boat from Greenwich. I snapped away then realised that my battery was dead. I took out the battery & put it in my pocket till I saw a shot I would like, then put the battery back in. I carried on like that for the whole day and the battery lasted.
I took 17 shots all day. Had I had a fresh battery I would have taken 3 or 4 times that amount.
Smaller cards may be the way forward for me.

[Chevvyf1]

Re: A Poor Show

I often take 3 or 4 of the "same" shot. However, its not actually exactly the same shot - light changes in the nanosecond between focus half depression and focus full depression.

With "water" shots I will take 9 in a series to achieve my objective, which is often that one Droplet of water with the sun shining through it. Like this its OOC but one of a half mile waterfall in Wales last weekend!



Dave I shall not constrain myself by taking out the battery or small chips - imagine you miss the best shot of the day for that second of flat battery or no chip space?

I delete in camera ruthlessly - the E-5 is great at magnification of BEST SHOTs and Delete Duffers NOW/as I go on through the day/maybe on the train home. I keep "not sures "and upload to the large screen PC and then delete loads more. Each chip has a file for all the shots and a file for BEST SHOTS; then I review the leftover ALL the SHOTS and any that cannot go into BEST go to the BIN !

Every year, in winter evenings I spend hours glancing through old folders and deleting and now I have 391 Gb of Bests ! and 240Gb of Work in Progress !

p.s. last Winter I did little deletions and so early summer I put by an hour an evening (well the weather has not be good in light and dry conditions to go out on motorbikes much in the evenings or sit in the garden )

[orsiphoto]

Re: A Poor Show

I've read this article a few months back and it works for me.
You go through your images a few times at various speeds to get rid of the junk and find the keepers by using the star rating system. I only post process the 4* & 5* images. If I shot my daughter, I'd quick edit some more for my mum from the 3* too otherwise wouldn't bother too much about the rest.
I'm a big fan of Kubota Lr presets. Few clicks and I'm done I really don't like to spend hours in post and I'm not into "special effects" either.