Drowning in photos

wrote:
On Jul 16, 6:22 am, Mxsmanic wrote:
When shooting film I'm constrained by the fact that each shot costs a certain
amount of money. When shooting digital, however, the cost of each shot is
nearly zero, and the tendency is to shoot and shoot. So when I get home, I
end up with 400 shots to sort through, instead of 30 or 40.

Is there a methodical way to sort through such large numbers of photos? What
methods do you use to weed through what you've shot and decide what to throw
out and what to keep? I was thinking maybe of making multiple passes through
the photos separated by a day or two, each time removing everything that isn't
really worth keeping, but perhaps others have more efficient methods for
rapidly getting rid of the bulk of photos and retaining only the "keepers."


Just be ruthless. remember if you keep them all, you are keeping
the worse stuff you have, You really don't want anyone to see your
second best, get rid of it now. When you only show your best, you
look your best.

I agree! Cull.....Cull.....Cull.
I know it's hard at first.
There is a certain pride of authorship in taking photos.
A considerable emotional investment is made in taking each shot
It hurts to discard nice photos that are, nevertheless, third rank.

I used to keep about 25-30% of my shots.
After all, H.D. space is cheap and easy to use. Why not keep 75%%..100%?
But retrieving the image I wanted from an archive of several thousands
of saved images became more trouble than it was worth, because I so
rarely ended up actually using the third rank pictures.
Now, my criterion is, "Am I willing to spend time editing this picture".
(Even a basic crop, levels and color adjustment and a bit of sharpening
require several minutes of time. Heavy editing takes me a lot longer.)
If the answer is yes or maybe, I save it. Otherwise it gets ditched.
I end up keeping about 10% of my images, most of which I edit in PS.
I know that many people will advise keeping all the shots on a hard
drive. After all, it is EASIER to keep everything than it is to cull.
And MAYBE one of these days you will wish you had saved them...Perhaps.
But IMHO,storage is not the problem.....Retrieval is the problem.
And like the OP, one ends up drowning in saved images, the vast majority
of which will NEVER be accessed again........One man's opinion.
Bob Williams

Bob Williams wrote:
wrote:
On Jul 16, 6:22 am, Mxsmanic wrote:
When shooting film I'm constrained by the fact that each shot costs a
certain
amount of money. When shooting digital, however, the cost of each
shot is
nearly zero, and the tendency is to shoot and shoot. So when I get
home, I
end up with 400 shots to sort through, instead of 30 or 40.

Is there a methodical way to sort through such large numbers of
photos? What
methods do you use to weed through what you've shot and decide what
to throw
out and what to keep? I was thinking maybe of making multiple passes
through
the photos separated by a day or two, each time removing everything
that isn't
really worth keeping, but perhaps others have more efficient methods for
rapidly getting rid of the bulk of photos and retaining only the
"keepers."


Just be ruthless. remember if you keep them all, you are keeping
the worse stuff you have, You really don't want anyone to see your
second best, get rid of it now. When you only show your best, you
look your best.

I agree! Cull.....Cull.....Cull.
I know it's hard at first.
There is a certain pride of authorship in taking photos.
A considerable emotional investment is made in taking each shot
It hurts to discard nice photos that are, nevertheless, third rank.

I used to keep about 25-30% of my shots.
After all, H.D. space is cheap and easy to use. Why not keep 75%%..100%?
But retrieving the image I wanted from an archive of several thousands
of saved images became more trouble than it was worth, because I so
rarely ended up actually using the third rank pictures.
Now, my criterion is, "Am I willing to spend time editing this picture".
(Even a basic crop, levels and color adjustment and a bit of sharpening
require several minutes of time. Heavy editing takes me a lot longer.)
If the answer is yes or maybe, I save it. Otherwise it gets ditched.
I end up keeping about 10% of my images, most of which I edit in PS.
I know that many people will advise keeping all the shots on a hard
drive. After all, it is EASIER to keep everything than it is to cull.
And MAYBE one of these days you will wish you had saved them...Perhaps.
But IMHO,storage is not the problem.....Retrieval is the problem.
And like the OP, one ends up drowning in saved images, the vast majority
of which will NEVER be accessed again........One man's opinion.
Bob Williams

The important part is culling. I put seconds in a subfolder called
'seconds' so when browsing the main folder, it's clean. I cull with
Irfanview by copying the path from the title bar into the Irfan
'move-to' destination, then just tap on the F7 key while flipping
through the set. This risk free method allows culling to move much
faster, reducing long torturous moments of hesitation.

I have been forced to move those off my main drive though and that's
quite a lot of work: create a folder with the same name
'2008-07-15-mission' drop the seconds folder in there, cut & paste to an
old backup drive... You are right, this is a drag & a lot of work & I'm
behind on it even now.

There have been numerous times I've dug into the seconds folders looking
for a little different angle or something. Not thousands of times though :-)

I only copy over raw files for the top culled files. This pushes me to
at least always make a major cull right off the bat... it would be
simpler to copy over all the raw & jpegs but then I'd have to delete
most of the raws.

--
Paul Furman
www.edgehill.net
www.baynatives.com

all google groups messages filtered due to spam

In article , Paul Furman
wrote:

Bob Williams wrote:
wrote:
On Jul 16, 6:22 am, Mxsmanic wrote:
When shooting film I'm constrained by the fact that each shot costs a
certain
amount of money. When shooting digital, however, the cost of each
shot is
nearly zero, and the tendency is to shoot and shoot. So when I get
home, I
end up with 400 shots to sort through, instead of 30 or 40.

Is there a methodical way to sort through such large numbers of
photos? What
methods do you use to weed through what you've shot and decide what
to throw
out and what to keep? I was thinking maybe of making multiple passes
through
the photos separated by a day or two, each time removing everything
that isn't
really worth keeping, but perhaps others have more efficient methods for
rapidly getting rid of the bulk of photos and retaining only the
"keepers."


Just be ruthless. remember if you keep them all, you are keeping
the worse stuff you have, You really don't want anyone to see your
second best, get rid of it now. When you only show your best, you
look your best.

I agree! Cull.....Cull.....Cull.
I know it's hard at first.
There is a certain pride of authorship in taking photos.
A considerable emotional investment is made in taking each shot
It hurts to discard nice photos that are, nevertheless, third rank.

I used to keep about 25-30% of my shots.
After all, H.D. space is cheap and easy to use. Why not keep 75%%..100%?
But retrieving the image I wanted from an archive of several thousands
of saved images became more trouble than it was worth, because I so
rarely ended up actually using the third rank pictures.
Now, my criterion is, "Am I willing to spend time editing this picture".
(Even a basic crop, levels and color adjustment and a bit of sharpening
require several minutes of time. Heavy editing takes me a lot longer.)
If the answer is yes or maybe, I save it. Otherwise it gets ditched.
I end up keeping about 10% of my images, most of which I edit in PS.
I know that many people will advise keeping all the shots on a hard
drive. After all, it is EASIER to keep everything than it is to cull.
And MAYBE one of these days you will wish you had saved them...Perhaps.
But IMHO,storage is not the problem.....Retrieval is the problem.
And like the OP, one ends up drowning in saved images, the vast majority
of which will NEVER be accessed again........One man's opinion.
Bob Williams

The important part is culling. I put seconds in a subfolder called
'seconds' so when browsing the main folder, it's clean. I cull with
Irfanview by copying the path from the title bar into the Irfan
'move-to' destination, then just tap on the F7 key while flipping
through the set. This risk free method allows culling to move much
faster, reducing long torturous moments of hesitation.

I have been forced to move those off my main drive though and that's
quite a lot of work: create a folder with the same name
'2008-07-15-mission' drop the seconds folder in there, cut & paste to an
old backup drive... You are right, this is a drag & a lot of work & I'm
behind on it even now.

There have been numerous times I've dug into the seconds folders looking
for a little different angle or something. Not thousands of times though :-)

I only copy over raw files for the top culled files. This pushes me to
at least always make a major cull right off the bat... it would be
simpler to copy over all the raw & jpegs but then I'd have to delete
most of the raws.

Having switched to digital, I found that I take a bit more pictures; I
hate to delete pics (out of focus one maybe) so if one uses a piece of
software to classify the shots, it's really not too much work to
retrieve the picture that you want. Lightroom, Bridge, Aperture,
iViewMedia Pro (now Expression Media), Cumulus and Portfolio are all
good for cataloging images.

Finding a system that suits you is vital; keeping the files on HD, CD
and DVD is just a matter of a way to archive and safely keep copies of
your pictures.

Since I used a classification method from my old days (I should not say
that, but it is now old days!) I tranferred it to the digital world,
trying to keep it simple and easy to work with. Since I'm selling a lot
of pictures, it is important to have accesss to my whole collection and
at the same time be able to do a search that will get me results pretty
close to what I'm searching for.

Take more time to design a scheme of keywords, then use a software to
implement that classification.

Good luck and don't get lazy... as soon as you tranfer your pictures,
get to work and try to classify everything. You get behind too much and
you'll regret it.