Walled Garden
Image by Sean Molin Photography
We all have flaws. I’m talking about the ones that are part of our personality and tend not to die easily. Mine? Not deleting negatives I’ll never use again.
There’s really multiple facets to this. On one hand, for the sake of longevity, organization, and overall sanity, you should immediately delete bad shots. We’re talking focus issues, experimental comps that failed, photos of people blinking, or 6 of the 8 photos you took of a sequence to try to get the perfect moment.
But then there are the "what-ifs?" These are the sold shots that are technically fine, but you’re not sure what to do with them. With portraits, these are the shots that you don’t plan on delivering to the client, but you really could. With weddings, these are the shots that get delivered, but don’t make the album.
With travel, I hold on to these forever. This photo, for example, has never been touched until today, yet it was taken four years ago. I never spoke to me, but I looked at it today and said "B&W. Red filter." I love the compression. I love the dramatic clouds. I love the massive wall of the Roman colosseum. It took four years for me to care. My tastes have changed. My eye has changed. I’m glad I kept it.
This is vital for travel, because you never know when/if you get the chance to do it again. I will probably go back to Rome someday, but I’m not lucky enough to get the perfect weather we had this particular morning.
With portraits, the working professional needs to make decisions, especially with working files getting larger and larger. In the days of 30mp+ we’ve got to make rules for client work. Hold on to the 2nd tier shots for a finite amount of time. After that, delete them. Only archive the shots you delivered.
For weddings, things get tricky and there are a few ways to go about this. Those 2nd-tier shots, the ones that don’t make it into the album? You’ve got to keep. Period. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will: someone who was at the wedding passes away and you’ve got one of the best shots ever taken of them… or maybe it was recent and it was one of the last ones. Or maybe it was an off-the-cuff shot that was unremarkable but it was a small group and it now means the world to them.
I’ve had it happen. I’ve had the shots they wanted tucked away in my library "somewhere." I couldn’t be thanked enough, and I was so happy to deliver.
Bottom line: with storage getting so cheap, there’s no reason to be stingy with keeping shots… but make it a habit to delete crap immediately. In extremely heavy workflow situations, have a system. With weddings, only the client can really know the true value of some of your work. Let them make that decision. Hold on to anything that is in focus.
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