My first DSLR (an old Canon D30) takes fast sports shots. The pictures are piling up, so I need to figure out how to cull my photos. Do you just grit your teeth and hit delete? I think I heard that pros keep, on average, 1 out of 5 shots. Anyone have any philosophy or tips on how to quickly and painlessly cull through the 600 pictures that I take at every game? Pics that are majorly out of focus, way over or under exposed, someone in the way, etc. have already been deleted. (I have kept some less than desirable pictures because it was all I had.) I have about 15 consecutive shots of my daughter taking a shot. You can watch it as a movie! lol How to decide which ones to keep? Oh, you probably need to know that I am taking pictures for the whole team and not just my kids. We are giving each player a cd. Once those are burned then I will keep only the pics with my kids. Any suggestions on how to cull through the ones that are left? I have a small hd otherwise I would keep all of the ones with my kids.

Thanks,

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Marcy

I'm no help to you since I take tons of photos too and hardly ever delete any. Wait, I'm quick to delete those of me but all the others pretty much stay. I'd be interested in feedback on this too.

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Serena Thomas

I hear ya... to be honest.. I don't really delete any photos either. For a photo shoot of a client.. I do the following:

1. Download all RAW files with Downloader Pro which renames and auto adds copywrite and other metadata to the photos. The photos get copied to my Photo Drive and placed in a RAW folder with the photo date.

2. Fire up Lightroom and Import the folder. I add add'l metadata here and keywords and might also apply a default develop profile to take the RAW files and touch them up a bit on import.

3. Now.. using LR, I pick blocks of photos and use the compare tools to view all them at once. Sometimes this is just 3 shots.. or sometimes it is 14. Shots that are obviously bad (closed eyes, blurry, extra person in bkg, etc) are color coded Red - these get deleted at a later time. Shots that are close, get the yellow label and shots that are good get green. If I find a shot that is obviously the best at this point, I flag it.

4. Once I'm done with the review process, I then take all the flagged photos and develop them. I choose one in the set and get it near perfect and then sync the settings that apply to others in the set.

5. Once the flagged ones are done, I move on to the green ones and review again, weeding out obvious duplicates and ones that might not be as sharp, etc. These are changed from green to red. I then develop the green ones using the settings from the flagged ones.

6. If I feel I still need more photos for the client, I'll move on to the yellow ones and repeat step 5. If not, then I'll just take the flagged and green ones and create a flash based LR web gallery for my clients to review on my website.

7. Now, I'll take the red ones and delete them completely from the system.

8. I then go back and tweak the flagged, green and yellow photos metadata and add specifics to them that might be needed (add'l keywords per photo or special notes, etc).

9. I then save the metadata and create sidecar files with this info. I also take these photos and create a sub-collection in my clients collection.

10. Depending on the photo shoot, I might then burn the photos to DVD.

11. My System is setup to auto-backup any new items on my photos HD every day - I just check it every so often to ensure this is happening.

12. Once this is complete, I format the memory cards in my camera and I'm ready for another shoot.

13. Once a month, I pull out an external HD I keep in my firesafe and take a complete backup of my Photo Drive.. this then gets put back into the firesafe. Also, every few months, I wipe the daily backup EHD and do another initial backup.

Good Luck!!

Thank you so much for those detailed directions! I am horrible about backing up my data - it's my new year's resolution to do a better job. And I'm testing out LR right now - your directions help a lot!

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Welcome.. let me know if I can help further.. been using this process for a few years (with various software) and it works really well...

Pesto, you said your system is set up to autoback up any new items on your photo HD everyday. Did your HD come with a program that does this or what program do you use that just locates the new stuff to back up?

Thank you.

I use a program called Acronis True Image - What it does is called incremental backups. I have it setup to backup only new or changed items (it checks both filesize and date stamps) every night at 2am... so, after the initial backup of the whole drive, it only does what is needed and I'm ensured my drives are synch'd every night. Every few months, I do format the drive and do a full backup again - this is just to merge all those individual incremental files down into one.. not necessary but is easier to work with.

There are a bunch of programs out there.. but I like Acronis the best.

Pesto, thanks for all the help! Looks like I will have to add Light Room and Acronis True Image to my dream Christmas list. lol

I like the way that you flag and grade your photos. I think I could do that with folders. It wouldn't be as neat as what you do, but I think it would work.

I keep my photos in a year folder that is divided into month folders, and each month's folder is divided into event folders such as Aimee's birthday, 11-23-07 game, botanic gardens etc. If I can't remember where a photo is located (since I don't normally rename), I can search for the event and go from there. Anyways, I could keep the prime photos "loose" in the event folder and the lower grade photo could be kept in a "B grade" folder inside the event folder.

The more I think about this, the more that I like the idea. This doesn't really help with the deleting, as you said, but it helps in organizing them so that if I have to delete I will know where to start.

Thanks again!

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Marcy