Know What To Keep and What To Dump

[Ishyid]

Hi there,
I went down to my local garen nurserey yesterday and took about 100 pictures of the gardens that they have on display. I was wondering how do you know what pictures to keep, and what ones to trash. Is there anything particular that you look for or what? Also, when I am editing them what exactly should I alter? If you can;t tell, I am new to photography and am trying to self teach myself. But anyways if you could help me out that would be great.

Thanks,
Joshua

[dcclark]

I have two different general "modes" -- artistic and documentary. My process is different for each.

For "artistic" photography, I usually do one run through my photos and toss anything with obvious technical problems -- bad exposure, blur, shake, etc., or if it really doesn't interest me at all. I let them sit a day, then I do another run through, and I am vicious -- tossing anything that I don't think is really a good photo worth spending time on. I rarely end up keeping more than 3 or 4 photos from a day. Then I start editing, cropping, and whatever other post-processing I need. But then again, I'm pretty harsh with myself.

For "documentary" photos, I also toss out technically poor photos. But in the second run-through, I only toss ones that don't show what I wanted to document -- they may not be artistic, but if they show what I wanted, I keep it. That's a bit easier.

That's just MY process. I'm very harsh with my own photos, so you need to know yourself and what YOU want!

[Jim Bryant]

Anything that's not technically good, such as out of focus, blurred, way over exposed or underexposed is dumped. I try to keep vert rand horz shots of same image.

[B..]

I'm not a professional, so I've been sloppy in handling my photos. Now I'm in the middle of trying to organize my digital photos. (I recently completed a project of scanning and organizing all my film photos.)

My suggestion is ... don't dump any photos. Even the horrible ones. Because 'x' years in the future you'll wonder whether you lost something wonderful!

And, to my utter amazement, some of my old photos look much better to me now than they did back when I took them.

B..

[SNOOPY]

I agree....
I havent got rid of hardly any... Except if they were really out of focus.
Mine all automatically go to my screensaver and I have lost count of the amount of times I have walked past my computer and gone OMGoodness what a cool shot. And it is always one that I didnt like before, or thought was a very bad capture.

[Gobae]

Just so you get an idea of where I'm coming from; I'm a hobbyist, I take "artistic" photos (mostly landscape and some macro), and I also document the reproduction of historic artifacts for how-to guides for re-enactors and living history enthusiasts. I take an average of 75-150 photos/week (raw+jpg).

My procedure is pretty similar to the others mentioned. Instantly tossed are those that are really bad technical mess-ups; anything else I pretty much keep.

The reason I keep so many is that over time I've discovered that:

-Sometimes I need a photo of something that wasn't the intended target but it got captured anyway
- My PP has improved and I can "save" a photo that I couldn't when first taken
- Various angles, distances, exposures originally unwanted end up being usable or even ideal for other projects.

I use Adobe Bridge CS3 to catalog them and keep the originals on a 500GB external HD.

[windrider86]

I generally dont keep an image if its out of focus or just doesnt hold an interest.
I've learned that if i have to ask someone what they think, that if I have to ask, that should be my answer.
But then again,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

[bobajob]

I sort through my photos and those that are blurred I dump. The best I put onto an external hard drive and back them up on a cd or dvd. The uninteresting ones go straight on to a cd and put away. I tend to keep almost all the photos. I try to put as much info in the title as possible including the day and date.