When to throw things away/archive?

[specious_reasons]

There are 3 triggers to this question:

First I've filled more than 1/2 the hard drive of this laptop with photos (microscope and others). Second, I generated something like 19 G worth of pictures and video during our last vacation, and third, I started using a combination of Picasa and Photoshop Elements to help manage my pictures. (Picasa primarily for microscope pictures, and Elements for other work.)

I realized I have a lot of pictures, and not all of them are very good or very useful.

About a year back, I went through my collection and deleted all the microscope pictures that were clearly horrible; really bad exposures, out of focus, subject moved out of frame, and those sorts of problem no amount of post-processing can recover from.

Still, the culling was pretty mild, and if the picture had any redeeming value, I probably kept it.

My questions are: When do you throw out your pictures? If you can't bear to get rid of them, what do you do with the ones that just don't seem very useful?

[DQE]

I also find these issues to be very stressful and not easy to come to terms with.

It's made more confusing in some ways by the continued increase in hard drive size and reduced cost per gigabyte. Once the temporary Thailand flood-based shortage of hard drive manufacturing is cleared up, their prices should return to their long-established trend line. The last time I looked, 3 TB hard drives were the largest size, and I was glad I stocked up last spring when they were relatively cheap.

Having multiple 3TB hard drives conveniently permits one to accumulate ever larger amounts of digital photos, most of which is "suboptimal" to say the least. As you describe, I can only bring myself to get rid of photos that are badly compromised. I know most of my photos wouldn't be valued by others but they constitute a hobby I very much enjoy even though my skills are definitely not ready for the "Photographic Olympics" or international prizes. I guess I'm more or less at peace with keeping so many of my macro photos as long as I can reasonably afford to do so. If hard drive storage costs or other technical considerations make it necessary to reduce the size of my stored photos collection, I'll simply have to figure out some way to classify and cull them...

Fortunately, these digital photos don't have much of a physical space issue - at least my basement or attic aren't filling up with boxes of slides and prints! Many hobbies involving collections of physical items can and do overwhelm one's physical storage space. Digital storage space is becoming increasingly inexpensive as time passes.

Perhaps better cataloging schemes are needed, hopefully already worked out by others on the forum. I simply make a folder for each day's photos and include a few keywords in the folders as well as tags and/or the file names themselves. This way, using readily available an easy to use PC utilities and software I can find (for example) all my jumping spider photos and review them by date, species (if available), and/or Adobe Bridge's ratings and labels scheme.

I tried using Lightroom for these purposes but it was too unstable IMO. I regularly had to rebuild the databases and came to feel that I was constantly one error away from losing the whole thing and having to start over with Lightroom's tags and cataloging.

Does anyone have a good system for cataloging and putting one's photos into an easy to use and affordable photo database system? As I mentioned, I'm justing using keywords in file and folder names plus tags in Adobe Bridge.

[specious_reasons]

Insightful comments, thanks.

Tagging JPGs in Picasa will write them directly into the file's IPTC meta data, but will not do that for RAW files (at least Canon RAW).

Tagging pictures in Photoshop Elements Organizer will do the same for both RAW and JPGs, but I think you have to explicitly tell it to do so (i.e. will keep the tags in its catalog.)

I've been making sure to do this, as I've been switching between the 2 programs, and I don't want to have to duplicate work.

Embedding the tags in the files seems to be more reliable than hoping Adobe doesn't corrupt its database.

[Craig Gerard]

My questions are: When do you throw out your pictures? If you can't bear to get rid of them, what do you do with the ones that just don't seem very useful?

Archive them onto high quality DVD using archival quality discs such as Taiyo Yuden (Master Grade). Cheaper DVDs will begin to deteriorate after 10 years, Taiyo Yuden should last for 100+ years. Archiving onto optical media is recommended practice.

Digital asset management (DAM) software would be an appropriate inclusion in your workflow.

As to whether to keep an image or permanently erase it can depend on certain criteria. If your intentions were purely for photographic purposes, instinct will quickly determine if you have a 'photograph' worth keeping. At other times, the image may serve as a record of a moment in time or place; otherwise, if it has no redeeming features, it may still serve as a learning tool, 'how could that image be better, and what would I do differently if given the same opportunity again?"

I tend to delete images as required (sometimes immediately, before I become attached) but I generally do so during the course of a number of pass overs at different times. If something gives cause to hesitate, keep the image, at least until the next assessment and so on and so forth.



Craig

[DQE]

From Craig Gerard:

"Digital asset management (DAM) software would be an appropriate inclusion in your workflow. "

Craig,

Would you have any recommendations or comments that you would be willing to share about good DAM packages for photography and especially bug photography?

I've not found any convincing options that would fit in with my everyday bug photography yet, and have just improvised a combination of file naming and the searchable tags, keywords, and labels that Adobe CS5 Photoshop's Bridge program allows one to associated with each raw image. I think Bridge puts the keywords into each raw file's metadata but I am not sure. I couldn't find keywords I used for some hover photos by searching the.xmp files in Notepad but maybe these things are in the folder's bridgecache files.

[Craig Gerard]

Phil,

I use MediaPro from PhaseOne. It was previously owned by Microsoft (Expression Media) before PhaseOne purchased the rights and began outfitting the program with a specific emphasis on photography. It was also acquired by PhaseOne to compliment CaptureOne and provide a tailored DAM facility. It can also be used as a standalone DAM.

http://www.phaseone.com/media-pro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4b_duu5IDU



Craig

[SONYNUT]

the minute you throw it away you'll need it...never fails