Back in the “good old” film days, we would load up a roll of film (best case 36 pictures) to cover a birthday party or other family event. We would then bring it to a local pharmacy or lab for processing. A few days later we’d pick up a bulging envelope of 36 prints. Typically, some were blurry, some had heads cut off, some just had bad expressions or closed eyes. Hopefully there were a few gems among them. So we would toss the bad prints, and keep the good ones.
Fast forward to the digital age. No limit on number of shots we can take, so we shoot a lot. A real lot. That in itself isn’t a problem, in fact we are more likely to get some good shots. But what about the bad shots, of which there will be a lot? It’s easy to swipe through dozens if not hundreds of shots on your phone. And since there isn’t a bulging envelope of prints to deal with, for most that’s where it ends — we keep ALL the images that we shot.
Let’s forget for a moment about the problem of filling up a memory card, which is becoming unlikely given that we can now purchase huge capacity cards cheaply. But what happens after we’ve pulled out that phone camera to cover a dozen “events”, or maybe hundreds over a few years? You might find yourself with a library containing many thousands of images, all with meaningless file names (other than dates). Among those thousands you might have captured 100 really good shots… but which ones are they??
This is one of the major problems of the digital photography age, and there are three parts to the problem: (1) The need to cull, or remove the bad images, (2) the need to organize and name what’s left, and (3) the need to preserve those good images so they never get lost. I’ll deal with organization and preservation in future posts. For now, take a few moments after your shooting spree to review what you’ve captured. As you scroll through the images, delete those you don’t like! It’s a simple concept of course, but few people actually take the time. It’s easy to say to yourself that you’ll sort them later…. but later usually doesn’t come. And if it does, by then you have a much bigger task due to a bigger volume of photos.
I can’t emphasize enough how important this step is. And if done right away (or maybe at end-of-day) it’s easy. It might take some practice to learn how to pick let’s say one of four very similar shots; to realize which one you actually like best. But what’s the point of keeping all four? Especially if they are so similar that you can’t choose? Professional photographers have to do this process of culling out images all the time. Sometimes it requires a few passes to get down to whatever you’ve set as your target number of “final” images.
In later posts on organizing and preserving your images you will see how this step makes the next steps possible and valuable. Meantime, practice culling: selecting from a large quantity by removing or discarding inferior or unwanted samples.