As you take pictures over the years, your mountain of images will grow. Many of them — indeed, most of them — will be forgettable, uninteresting, or unwanted. So, should you just delete them?
I’ve made lots of mistakes in my career as a photographer, but there’s one area I got right. From the first time I got my camera I identified two important things: 1) My tastes and skill change over time, and 2) storage is cheap. So, I didn’t delete any images unless they were completely out of focus. I remember a far more senior and experienced photographer telling me as a novice that it was silly to keep all images and that I’d never look at them again. I could see his point, but I didn’t agree. It’s not like putting knick-knacks in the attic for several decades in case you ever want it.
In the last year, I’ve started to get the fruits of this bizarre behavior of digital hoarding. I started going back through trips I’d been on and seeing if I could figure out how to edit some landscapes in a way I like. Regular readers of mine know well that I am not a landscape photographer and when I do try, I can never quite get them to the ridiculous, unachievable standard I aspire to. Nevertheless, as lockdown had me climbing the walls, I started going through trips to interesting places where I’d only edited one or two images. In this task, I created multiple sets of images that I now really like, a few standalone images I will get printed, and re-edited a few near misses. For the tiny amount of money it takes to store and back-up old photos, it really is a no-brainer to me.
Do you delete photos? Why, or why not? Share your thoughts in the comments below.