Culling

[Roger Calixto]

I've been culling my past 3 years of shooting for the past few months now. I must have deleted more than 1/2 of my shots and found it to be very unsatisfying. I just hate the sensation of deleting pictures. That said, I truly believe that a photographer is only as good as the pictures he shows, so culling is the first step to refinement.

So I thought I'd toss out my steps and see if anyone would like to do the same or comment on the topic. I've read here on LL that memory is cheap so there's no need to go delete-a-maniac but I do think that culling is a necessity. Of a series of shots of a location I believe the repeats should go, the best should stay and the very best should be shared (sold, published, shown, whatever).

A good discussion on the general topic was active a couple years ago here but it was very broad.

I've adopted a 3 star system I saw in a tutorial I liked. All shots in a session get marked as 1 2 or 3. 3s are deleted. 1s get refined into 1s and 2s and then 2s are archived. The topic mentioned above talks about editing your photos after a certain time has passed. One post even talks about doing the first pass one day giving 1-5 stars. Then another day the 3-5s are revisited and a third day the best shots are chosen.

How do you do it?

{}
KT

[Ken Bennett]

I shoot way too much, so I have to delete a lot or I would quickly run out of server space. (I'm only slightly exaggerating.) I usually end up deleting about half of my raw take.

I've been using Photo Mechanic for a long time, and really got used to using the Tagging feature rather than a 5-star system. So, after I rename and apply a quick general caption and keyword set, I quickly go through my files and tag everything I would like to save for posterity. Then I select all the untagged photos and delete them. Then I un-tag the selected (saved) photos. At this point I can add more specific caption and keyword information. (No reason to do that to files that might get deleted.)

Next I go through the selects and tag the images that I want to process. This can be one file (for a simple headshot) to 250+ files (for a Commencement ceremony or an important football game.) Those files are then opened in my raw processor and move the rest of the way through the workflow.

[Chris_Brown]

In the 1980's, I read an interview of Jay Maisel and he spoke of "being brutally honest" during editing to attain the highest level of quality across an entire shoot. If there was any question at all about the aesthetic quality of an image, it should be tossed.

Now he sings a different tune:

Q: What's your digital editing process?

A: In the past, I always edited on a projector, something I did well and quickly. Now I have a completely different problem and it is very difficult for me: I don't like sitting at a computer. I have shot maybe 50, 60 thousand images and I have looked at very few of them, the tip of the iceberg. It's a difficult thing. The beauty of the transparency was that it was there, you had it, it was available, you could sell it, you could show it, you could do what you want without any further ado. With digital you do have the image, it's in the computer, you can get it out, but then you have to start putting it in context of other images you want. You can make slideshows, you can do anything, you can make prints. But you've got to do it. And the doing it is the part that is very tough for me because I have to deal with the computer.

(Pulled from this interview.)

When editing digital images, I have a 4-stage process:

• Delete total crap right off the card/camera. This is usually bad exposures and/or soft focus.
• Next, on the computer (usually a laptop on location) with a cold ale in hand, I peruse everything and toss a few more. At this point I'm able to check very thoroughly for sharpness, and how the histogram looks under different colorspaces.
• The thrid edit is the most crucial and takes the longest. I'm always at my workstation with a calibrated, trusted monitor (a Sony Artisan at the moment). What's left after this step is the good material that can be used by myself and/or my clients.
• This step is to delete the images that neither I nor the client wanted. If there's any question of its value, I keep it, otherwise it's gone. At this stage only a handfull of images might get deleted.

I don't know where you are in your career of photography, but what really helped me when I started out was making prints. I had a Kodak Ektaflex system and I cranked out hundreds of 8x10 prints and covered the walls of my apartment. I'd sit there for hours looking and studying them, and I'd also ask friends for their opinions.

I still make prints to help me study images, but the images are "finalists" to help me determine what I'll use for displays, marketing and gifts.

[Geoff Wittig]

I've been culling my past 3 years of shooting for the past few months now. I must have deleted more than 1/2 of my shots and found it to be very unsatisfying. I just hate the sensation of deleting pictures. That said, I truly believe that a photographer is only as good as the pictures he shows, so culling is the first step to refinement.

So I thought I'd toss out my steps and see if anyone would like to do the same or comment on the topic. I've read here on LL that memory is cheap so there's no need to go delete-a-maniac but I do think that culling is a necessity. Of a series of shots of a location I believe the repeats should go, the best should stay and the very best should be shared (sold, published, shown, whatever).

A good discussion on the general topic was active a couple years ago here but it was very broad.

I've adopted a 3 star system I saw in a tutorial I liked. All shots in a session get marked as 1 2 or 3. 3s are deleted. 1s get refined into 1s and 2s and then 2s are archived. The topic mentioned above talks about editing your photos after a certain time has passed. One post even talks about doing the first pass one day giving 1-5 stars. Then another day the 3-5s are revisited and a third day the best shots are chosen.

How do you do it?

{}
KT

For what it's worth-
I switched to digital back when the original Eos-1Ds came out, and at the time CF cards were still very expensive, as in about $500 for a 1 gig card. This compelled me to be just as selective shooting digital as I had been shooting 35 mm slides, where every click of the shutter meant another 60¢ between film and processing. Now that storage is genuinely cheap I still don't take zillions of images. I'm glad I never developed the 'machine gun capture' habit, because it means I don't have to plow through hundreds of similar variants when I edit. On the other hand, I'm shooting more raw material for stitched panoramics and HDR merges these days, but I tend to regard them as 'one extended shot' rather than seperate images.

I'll only delete completely obvious failures from the camera, as I can't edit anything on a 3" LCD with my middle-aged eyes. Once I get home I do a rough edit on transfering files to my desktop computer, deleting anything that's grossly out of focus or otherwise unsalvageable. I do star-label the obvious winners. I tend to keep everything else, because years later I might see some real artistic promise in an image that doesn't appeal to me today. This has proven to be repeatedly true, especially as Adobe camera raw has gotten so much better at retrieving good results from near-miss captures. Some of my best prints are reinterpretations of raw files that didn't do much for me three or four years ago.

[wolfnowl]

I also come from film, and often from medium format (6x6) film, where one roll was 12 exposures.  Even with digital I've never gotten too snap happy, but I don't often shoot things with a lot of movement.  If I have free time I'll scan through some images on the camera, but I don't delete them from the camera unless they're obviously bad.  I'll import them into Lightroom and in the Library module go to single image view and 100% (zooming in and out to look at perspective and framing as well).  I tend to be ruthless with my images, so anything I'm not happy with gets immediately flagged as rejected.  If I think I can do something with it, I'll keep it and move on.  Once that's done, if I have a sequence of similar images, I'll use the Compare mode and select the best one.  That one gets stars and the rest don't.  From there I get to the Develop module.

Mike.

[mattpallante]

When I first go through a shoot at the computer I'll rate images and delete as many as feels right at the time. As I go back to the folder to work on the highest rated images I will go through the rest of the images and cull again. I try to go through and cull a folder every time I open that folder. I will also ask my partner to look at images on the screen to give me a different perspective.

[jjj]

This image was initially rejected by the photographer [Pennie Smith] as it wasn't sharp.



Someone else looking at shots picked it out IIRC, it was then used on a iconic record cover [ever though the graphic design was a rip off/homage of an Elvis cover] and was voted by Q magazine as the greatest rock photo ever.
If she's been shooting digital, not film and deleted 'unworthy' shots as suggested above then her most famous shot would have disappeared.

[Chris_Brown]

If she's been shooting digital, not film and deleted 'unworthy' shots as suggested above then her most famous shot would have disappeared.

It sounds like you'd keep everything. What is your ratio of "keepers" to "deletions"?

[brianrpatterson]

I agree that technical issues are paramount to avoid  storing 'garbage', but keep the artistic factor in mind too. Many of my favorite shots are not perfect or even close to it, but caught a worthwhile scene. I often PP tem into 'art' if they are embarrassing in a stark naked state.

Thereafter, a solid storage scheme is needed to avoid losing said keepers when you've pared down the critical exposures. Multiple hard drives is the cheapest means, other than CD burning, and can be easily resaved or resorted for better archiving methods.

Finally, finding an image is a chore I go through for lack of a better archiving system - it seems to be an ongoing development...

[The View]

I found editing for the lesser shots a waste of energy.

It's what you do with film, where you have fewer frames.

So I started to edit from the top, marking the best shots, and leave the rest be. I just mark photos I don't like.

After I have finished a project I come back with a distance, and delete some.

And then with some time passed I come back fresh and know what to throw out.

Deleting images is important, or the good ones will be hard to find.


But if you delete too early, you might lose a good image.

Especially with portraits or people related photography, where a certain expression only catches on to you later.

In more than one case I had a reject become a star.

With photos it's like with people - it depends a lot on the situation and mood you're in when you look at them.

[jjj]

It sounds like you'd keep everything. What is your ratio of "keepers" to "deletions"?

Near infinite! I did a poster design a while back that used a shot that most people would have binned as it was blurred and severely overexposed. But then I do like abstract work, so do that that deliberately at times, including this shot. I think as I do graphic design as well as photography, I can see potential in images that people who take photos to be just standalone photos, may miss.
I'll try and find poster, but I think it's on the hard drives that are not in a machine/enclosure at moment.

[sniper]

"Next, on the computer (usually a laptop on location) with a cold ale in hand, I peruse everything and toss a few more. At this point I'm able to check very thoroughly for sharpness, and how the histogram looks under different colorspaces."

I'm courious how would you do this quickly without converting to the different spaces?   Wayne

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

What? Culling??? I leave that for my grandchildren to worry about. No time to cull; too busy buying more hard drives to store my rejects!

Actually, I have often found  some real gems while looking at shots taken several years ago. I've also found a lot of trash that I once had high hopes for. So I never rush to cull.

-Eric

[Chris_Brown]

"Next, on the computer (usually a laptop on location) with a cold ale in hand, I peruse everything and toss a few more. At this point I'm able to check very thoroughly for sharpness, and how the histogram looks under different colorspaces."

I'm courious how would you do this quickly without converting to the different spaces?   Wayne

Using ACR, simply change the output profile in the output settings and the histogram changes to account for the different colorspace. For example, if a very colorful photograph shows clipping of individual colors (i.e., total saturation) when using the sRGB colorspace, change the output setting to ProPhoto (which is much larger) and the histogram will contract and usually eliminate clipping of saturated colors.