Discarded shots

[AndCity]

The upcoming assignment got me thinking - what do people do with all their discarded shots. I generally pick the better ones and trash the remainder. But now I am wondering - should I keep them all? I recently read in National Geographic to never through them away as you don't know when one of them will be useful.

What do you do with yours?

[waffles]

I don't have space issue yet, so I keep all but the most horendous.

[dakwegmo]

What waffles said.

The only shots I delete are test shots, or shots where something went completely wrong. Otherwise, they go into the archives. Several times I've gone back through the archives and found shots that I didn't think much of at first, but after some time had passed, I realized they were much better than I had given them credit for. Usually this is because I was trying to do something with a shot and it didn't work the way I intended. After distancing myself from the failure of the shot, I can sometimes see that shots work in ways that I didn't intend.

[Jim Bryant]

I only throw away the ones that are so out of focus. Everything else I keep in external HD's and then burn to DVD's.

[rouxster]

Originally Posted by Jim Bryant

I only throw away the ones that are so out of focus. Everything else I keep in external HD's and then burn to DVD's.

I agree with Jim. I only get rid of the ones that are out of focus. Part of the reason for keep the others is becasue I dont know when I need them and the other reason is to be able to go back and see how my shots are progressing. I go back and look at the pictures I took the day I got my DSLR and it makes me cringe, but I actually still use one or two of them to print out and frame. Now that I am getting better with photoshop and lightroom, those pictures can be made to look really good.

[Sixpak]

If it's out of focus, I trash it. I'll keep others due to bad composition, subject matter, etc.. but if it's out of focus, then there really isn't a subject. After reviewing some of the "mistakes" in the assignment thread, I can understand why I might want to keep some of the non focused shots if they present me with some kind of interesting color or pattern.

[Silverz]

I delete ones that are an obvious waste of computer space, such as if I mistakenly take a photo of the bottom of my camera bag or ones where I may have selected the wrong camera settings and completely over exposed the whole image.
I also delete any that I may have taken during a learning phase while trying out a new technique.

Apart from that I keep the rest, but I am not sure how long I can go on like this before I will need to clear some out as since buying my camera my hard drive space, although quite large is getting eaten up at an alarming rate

Then again I could probably throw them all onto some recordable dvd's if I really had to.

[AndCity]

Unfortunately I haven't got the facility to burn dvd's, cds it'll have to be unless I buy new memory cards as they fill up...

[waffles]

DVD drives are relatively cheap and even easier to install. If you'll pay for the good, lodging, and plain over there I'd do it for free.