Do you keep failures?

[dreed]

Reviewing some images I took from a weekend excursion, I'm thinking "This really didn't work" (on screen but at the time it seemed like a good idea.)

Just before I hit the delete button I thought "Should I keep this so I remember not to do that again?"

Which made me wonder if others do this?

If you've made a compositional error, do you ever keep that image as a reminder of what doesn't work, lest you return to the same place and make the same mistake? As for why keep it, well human memory isn't always the best

The rationale here is that if over 20 years I only keep what works then one day I might decide to try something new/different again and unknowingly repeat a mistake from the past.

[KLaban]

I keep absolutely everything.

[Kiwi Paul]

I tend to keep everything except photos that haven't been taken properly at all (OOF or completely exposed wrong etc).
It's often surprising when looking back over photos I dismissed initially how with a bit of cropping and creative post processing I really can make a reasonable photo.
I think disk space is plentiful and cheap so I'm happy to keep them all, it's often more hassle deleting them.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Doing some housecleaning recently I just went through several cartons of prints from wet darkroom days. These were all ones that for whatever reason hadn't seemed good enough to drymount. I kept about a dozen that might be worth scanning, and dumped probably a couple of thousand.

Many of the discards were simply bad prints: it was so time-consuming to get a good print in pre-digital days. But most of them were just badly seen, sloppy, lazy images that had me asking: "what was I thinking?"

It was very humbling. On the other hand, I think my seeing (and technical prowess) have improved dramatically since I joined the digital revolution.

My suggestion: Keep everything for a while. Then, maybe once every ten years go through it all and see if you have gotten better in any respect. At that ponit, throw all the old discards away.

[John R]

I tend to keep everything except photos that haven't been taken properly at all (OOF or completely exposed wrong etc). [snip]

I did at first, as per Kiwi Paul. Looking back I would say it's because I never imagined how many images I would collect or how much impact Digital photography would have on my work. Now I delete almost anything not immediately deemed good or very good, and accept the consequences. I am in process of culling all my work. Probably will end up with one hard drive and one backup. My feeling is, the chances are slim that I will bother to wade through thousands of images in the future. I suppose if you are a professional you may have reasons to keep most of your images, such as wedding and client based work, but for most enthusiasts, I can't imagine going through thousands of images. Surely, if the finder of Vivian Maier's work, did not immediately see the value and quality of her work, they would have let it go into the garbage, and not waded through thousands of images.

JR

[Rob C]

Keep everything. I don't actually think I tend to shoot useless images; what I do believe is that something worthwhile triggers the click, but that it sometimes takes a while and a later look to see what the appeal really was, and then it gives me something to play around with which is always a nice, fortuitous gift.

It also happens that a small section of a shot turns out to be very useful when incorporated into a second image; Photoshop has changed the options beyond belief, and things that took a lot of tries to get right in the wet are now fairly straightforward today. You never know what may come in useful.

[Ivophoto]

I’ve been told some while ago I keep my rejects and throw away the keepers.

[Martin Kristiansen]

I keep my failures. I learn a lot from them. I don’t mean exposure errors or total misses with focus or accidental shutter triggering. I mean the stuff that’s technically fine but weak. I find my mistakes follow a pattern. Worth keeping and studying.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I keep everything, except for total technical failures or failed experiments that were redone successfully later. You also never know if (parts of) the image can be reused for another occasion. Sometimes the image can be totally repurposed for another goal, e.g. for image composites/overlays.

Cheers,
Bart

[RSL]

Depends on what you mean by "failures" and "keep." I go through two, and sometimes three steps in determining what to do with what I shoot. When the stuff comes off the camera I cull duplicates and out-and-out failures. What's left goes onto a dated "Capture" DVD. I then cull what's left for permanent storage in Lightroom and on three copies of a sequentially numbered DVD, stored in three different places. Finally, I select what I'm going to print or display. My Lightroom catalog and final DVD stack has around 23,500 pictures.

[petermfiore]

I keep everything...All that I shoot and all that I paint. My studio is bulging. Photos get revisited often and paintings that are less then successful get over painted. Often into my best works.

Peter

[Aram Hăvărneanu]

Apart from out of focus images, I don't delete anything.

[faberryman]

I don't excise frames from rolls of film. I just keep the full roll in a PrintFile sleeve even though there may be only a couple of frames I print. Likewise, I don't actively delete images from my Lightroom catalog. I just don't process them. I work on a project by project basis and rarely go back and look at old, unselected images.

[langier]

Unless it's the back of the lens cap, a shot of my backside or ground, a total failure of exposure/focus, etc., most everything goes into the deep archives just in case. Then I purge 60-80 percent of the images and those are in my JBOD farm under the desk.

Why? First, I remember the story of Dirk Halstead and the story of Monica's blue dress. He archived his work, the rest of his colleagues chimped and dumped their files... Second, when I edit, many times it's initially in the field of under deadline. Having the similars stashed in the deep archives saves me when I choose an image and then find out it's a little off in focus, composition, gesture, etc. It happens a few times of the year, but not too common.

I seldom, if ever purge in the field since the back of the camera is seldom a good way to judge an image and if you're chimping your pix, your missing life unfolding in front of you.

This way, I figure I'm covered. I've got fodder for visual notes, I've got "B" roll pieces to add to my story and I have back-up for my working files.

I also have my history of my vision, what made the cut, what didn't and if I return and shoot again, I can then see what I should concentrate on or improve.

Speaking of history, sometimes a little snap that seemed so inconsequential at the time becomes a cherished piece of history when the world out there changes. How many times have I simply said "I shoot that later when I have time or the conditions look better..." only to come back later and there is no later....

As always, find a system that works for you and keep at it!

[farbschlurf]

I do not delete any pictures, I find it helpful to look at my old and probably bad pictures from time to time. I found, when doing this it does happen something catches my eyes that I totally overlooked when I first selected photos of that occasion. Sometimes I find real surprises within my own archive. It's a bit like re-reading a book after years. You never read it the same.

[Telecaster]

I keep everything electronic that isn't a major technical fail (though some of my favs are "fails" that work) or a genuine duplicate. Often I'll see something but not capture it in the frame…sometimes the frame reminds me well enough of what I saw that I'll keep it for that reason. With film I keep everything except blank transparencies. 

-Dave-

[stamper]

I have 11 hard drives full of images, many of them duplicates. Culling just after downloading images from a card is imo foolish. Having said that I only import "keepers" into LR which means my catalogue is small. Recently I have been processing images taken from about 10 years ago.

[kers]

I like this subject;
I used to keep everything, but recently i just had to throw away shots. I made too much rubbish.
My work is partly making photographs at late night concerts,in bad light, sometimes in stroboscopic light; You can imagine how many failures you have...I shoot a 100GB on a night .
Now i keep about 20-30% of that.
I am in the process / mood of cleaning and throwing away things, after a long time of keeping everything. ( also just emptied my attic )
It takes a lot of time to throw away the right things- On the other hand- it makes me look more careful at the photographs i just made what could be done better next time, what could improve things.
If it is about photos of friends and family i hardly throw away anything, but the very worst.  If it is my architectural work i only throw away the clear technical failures.
It also has to do with my way of photographing; a lot of trail and error to find the right thing.
Of course you always risk that you throw away the wrong things looking back, but often i just do not know anymore what that was... fortunately .. and as i said i noticed that throwing away things makes you think deeper of what you really find valuable.

[Aram Hăvărneanu]

Personally I cull in Photo Mechanic or FastRawViewer. I find Lightroom far too slow for that. I don't delete what didn't make the cut though, rather I just star what made the cut and then only process those starred files in Lightroom (but I import them all).

I dislike Lightroom as much as ever. I used to use Adobe Bridge and Photo Mechanic for DAM functionality, and Adobe Camera Raw for processing, but for some reason Bridge became unusably slow and buggy, and that forced me to use Lightroom.

[Rand47]

If something I shoot is crap, it’s gone.  If there’s something to have been learned about “why” what I shot was crap, and if I’m too dense to remember it, then I deserve whatever more crap I shoot in the same circumstances.

I’m a scorched earth kind of guy.

If something I shoot “doesn’t work exactly” in my first “go” at editing, but I sense it might be something,  I’ll keep it for a while and revisit.  On second or third look, if nothing comes . . . It’s gonzo!

I’m a firm believer that you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken s*^t.

 

Rand