Comments on: Don’t Delete Your Digital Photography Mistakes Too Quickly

By: Alexandra

Alexandra — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 22:42:57 +0000

I never delete ANY pictures.
I have a strange affinity to that. I always make two copies of my pictures – one to go through and delete, and one to keep every single picture. I keep the gone through pictures on my laptop, and I keep the whole set on an external hard drive. Maybe it’s a bit strange, however, it makes me feel safe, like I’ll never lose a picture that was good.

And I take a whole lot of pictures

By: Artrina

Artrina — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 15:20:08 +0000

The only pix I delete from my camera are ones taken of the lens cap. When I get home from an event and transfer pix to my computer I make folders within folders titled “questionable”. That makes it easy for me to deal with pix; on the second pass thru folders more pix usually go into the questionable folders. When I get into the mood to play around with pix I go into the questionable folders and have found some gems in them.

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 01:01:01 +0000

scott, can you post it here?

By: Scott

Scott — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 23:11:29 +0000

While I agree that it is not possible to make critical evaluations of a photograph on the small camera LCD, there are plenty of times a shot can be deleted in camera. Personally, I would trash the example photo – I don’t think that is a good example of a worthwhile “mistake” photo. Some of my best mistakes were done in the days of film. I used to swap rolls before finishing them and re-insert and shoot the rest later (in order to change ISO – something we now take for granted as so easy with digital). I accidentally created multiple exposures more than once doing this – my best “mistake” is a multiple exposure of my wife’s face amidst pink hibiscus flowers. Honestly, I couldn’t have planned it better.

By: Ashley

Ashley — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 00:03:36 +0000

This actually happened to me recently. I was going through my shots after a photo shoot and there was one in there that was really over exposed. Still, I liked the image because of the composition and clarity so I decided to keep it to see what I could do with it. I turned it into a black and white and it was by far, the best photo of the session!!!

By: Jim News

Jim News — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 17:25:52 +0000

I like to go back to old folders, some shot years ago, and reexamine my work from days past.
My poor battered laptop has over 25,000 images on its HD. When this laptop was new and young, it replaced another old battered laptop, also with over 25,000 images on it. In all, I have photos spread out on several HD’s on several computers. I rarely delete photos. I want to delete, but I just can’t let go.
I guess some part of me likes to think those photos will one day, after I’m gone, be discovered and compiled into a book, “Jim’s Undiscovered Genius”. If the world suddenly decides it actually wants to see and pay for, really bad, poorly executed photos, I’m well positioned to make a fortune.

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 03:59:53 +0000

I never delete in camera. I use LR, and since I often have many photos of a similar thing or situtation, I pick keepers and delete the rest in the computer.

By: Elissa

Elissa — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 03:00:08 +0000

I keep most of the shots I take for 4 reasons:

1. I study them to find out why I don’t like them. It might be framing or focus or something obvious, but it might also be something less obvious…I used to have a tendency to only really look at the subject, framing etc. but found my mind’s eye would ignore distractions in the background. I saw this in bad shot after bad shot and it helped reinforce the message to me.

2. Bad shots are great for teaching. If you only have good shots and nothing in the presentation to compare them to its hard to convey the difference. I think a valuable learning opportunity is lost.

3. When composing a story after a trip it is helpful to look at photos to jog my memory about details. Even bad photos contain contextual information…I don’t use the photo in the story, but I use the information it contains to help me write it.

4. Portions of any photo can be used to create interesting backgrounds, buttons, titles etc. for webpages. I have hundreds of shots where I attempted to photograph dolphins…but they are so fast I’m often left with images of just blue water. I got the idea to use these photos in photoshop as fill layers for a sign with the word “ocean.” It came out great….

By: Monja

Monja — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 08:09:06 +0000

hi darren,

i agree with you. better to get a new memory card than deleting any picture! some pictures are not just valuable because they are good shots but they might be actually the only pic you´ll have from a person or situation. for example: i really do not have my pictures of my grandparents. i just have some digital ones. i´m so thankful for that. although i´d never think they are good shots – they are just valuable for me because now both are gone. pictures are memories, so don´t delete before you have them on the computer

By: Penny

Penny — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 03:52:38 +0000

I delete very few and almost never in camera. One of my favorite shots was taken from a moving cab in Cairo. Several members of a family were standing on the street engaged in a conversation. I was so disappointed when I brought the shot up on my computer. Here was this great photo, decently framed, and just out of focus enough to mean it was not a candidate for printing, let alone framing. Rats! But then, while playing around in Photoshop, I applied the poster filter–nothing extreme, just a little bit–and hey, the photo looked pretty good. The poster filter gave it a bit of an artsy look and the only one who knows it’s really just an out-of-focus shot is me. I framed it and six years later, it’s still a favorite.