Digital overload

[greypoint]

Do we take - or rather do we keep - too many photos? Everyone seems to have external hard drives of staggering proportions crammed with images. I'm in the process of getting some sort of order into all the stuff I've taken over the past few weeks...goodness there's a lot! I'm firmly of the belief that the change to digital has been a good thing from the point of view of freeing us all from the constraints of 24 or 36 frames - more chance to catch action, mor chance to experiment, more chance to practice. But just how often do you view all those old pictures stored away. During the winter I shall have a good old clearout - get rid of old stuff where I've managed better of the subject at a later date, where Ive got several almost identical shots etc. And probably have another go at a few I've overlooked. And try to get everything properly catalogued.
Do you ever feek overphotod? Or are you one of those paragons who takes sparingly and saves only the best

[anglefire]

Put me in the category of keeping far too many photo's! I have about 80K as a mixture of Jpg and RAW and some PSD/Tiffs.

I have been better since getting the MkIII - and do delete alot more than I used to - but one "problem" is that I backup to EHD automatically daily, so anything i haven't been through and deleted, is backed up. If ever I have to restore, then I'll get the crap back too!

There are ways that this can be solved - doing a sync rather than backup is one solution - but sometimes you do want to restore something you delete by mistake!!

[Graham]

   I've recently had a bit of a sort out.
  I had a 400gb hard drive almost full, and it's now only a quater full!
  It was a most theraputic exersise going "Delete,delete, delete. I'm trying not only to be more selective about what I save but also what I take.
  I went through every folder re-labled those already edited, tagged any other definate keepers(Not many.) and dumped the rest.
  It took about 8 two hour sessions to complete the task. My good lady wife said I was having some sort of mid-life crisis but as I pointed out, I had that when I was 22!
                         Graham.

[Oly Paul]

Seventeen years of photography and 4000 keepers (digital and film scans) including family pics , I guess that means I have rather high standards in the culling procedure or I'm just a lousy photographer.  

[Sandy]

I have quite a lot of photos, I keep putting off the post processing thinking I will get better and the photos will be better. I really must get round to sorting them out.

Sandy

[Jonathan]

Hmm.  After a busy Saturday, it appears I have 1762 pictures to "edit"..........

[greypoint]

Is that all..... 'amateur'

[Jonathan]

Is that all..... 'amateur'

Oh.  No.

Just realised I shot some on the G9.  Hmm 1766.  And 4 of those are on a Canon so they will take longer.........

[ABERS]

Hmm.  After a busy Saturday, it appears I have 1762 pictures to "edit"..........

Blimey if you can't get a couple of good 'uns out of that....well.

[Oly Paul]

Hmm.  After a busy Saturday, it appears I have 1762 pictures to "edit"..........

Blimey if you can't get a couple of good 'uns out of that....well.

Yea , I remember when wedding togs used to run a max of 4 rolls of 120 film of and that was classed as a lot. 

[Jonathan]

Hmm.  After a busy Saturday, it appears I have 1762 pictures to "edit"..........

Blimey if you can't get a couple of good 'uns out of that....well.

Dunno - you tell me.  Snaps.

Yea , I remember when wedding togs used to run a max of 4 rolls of 120 film of and that was classed as a lot.

Yeah, and I remember when they used to do 4 weddings in a day

[Hybridphotog]

Taken, and kept, too many digital photos? Yep... definitely. I have my 350D set to continuous shooting mode, so I end up with at least three nearly identical shots, thus making my decision about which shot to use even more fun.

Comparing that to my efforts with the Holga or Autocord, where I get twelve photos before having to reload, every shot has to count, so I end up slowing right down... sometimes spending minutes recomposing before firing the shutter. Every photographer should try using a TLR at least once, if only to learn about making composition count, and so reducing the amount of time spent correcting/cloning/editing things in photoshop.

Plus, all the blather about digital full-frame is really meaningless when compared to a single 120 negative.

[spinner]

I think I've kept every photo I've ever taken. I put it down to being of Scottish ancestry. Guess not. 

[minky_monkey]

I`ve slowed down a fair bit recently, when I used to go the WHF in Kent 1600 shots were not uncommon. Now, I take about 500.

I`ve also been doing a cull, it`s quite nice to see how far my photography has moved on since I started.  My quality control has definitely got stricter, and I`m more prepared to bin shots now than I used to be.

Saying that, I`ve got to get around to buying another HD.... lol.

[picsfor]

I'm guilty of keeping too many.

Hence my signing up to the OCA course on workflow.
I recently tried to transfer my digital railway pics to my laptop with a view to doing some streamlining in Lightroom.
I got an enormous shock when i discovered my laptop couldn't handle them as they came to a total of 227gb in size!

They are now just on the Mac again which has a 1Tb hard drive with and an EHD of duplicate size as a back up.
Goodness knows how much i would have once i turn all my film prints into digital as well as all the family and travels from print to digital.
And that on top of digital.

I think i'm gonna have to have a major clear out! Maybe i should organise a "clear out party" where people come round enjoy a drink and evaluate my pictures - that way it won't seem so bad deleting pictures