What do you do with all your Photographs?

[Codebreaker]

I'm always curious about what folks do with their collection of Digital Photographs. My post is prompted by a thread I read on another Forum where the poster was having problems with his 45,000 images. (Maybe they were a pro but I've come across amatuers that have similar numbers)

I've been seriously shooting digital for about 12 years yet my collection only numbers about 9,000. ( I have very, very few duplicates)

Digital has no doubt allowed some people a shotgun approach when taking pictures - which is fine if that's what you want.

But what do you do with them once you have them?

How often do you go back and look over your old photo's - like sitting around the fire and getting the shoe box out containing the family pictures?

For me, I make slideshows of particular themes; prints and cards of my favourites and my wife does scrapbooking (the manual way with just prints).

What do you do with yours? How often have you looked at old photos? How many do you think never see the light of day again ( or the screen!!)

Just curious ;)

Colin

[Wendy]

Hi Colin ...

I take lots of photographs and then am ruthless when I edit ... I maybe only keep a very small percentage of them.

As far as what do I do with them ... well I use iPhoto to store them in a digital equivalent of photo albums. I have new albums each year and within the albums are sub albums for different trips I have taken or occasions.

I do browse through them ... not often manually more often by turning the album into a simple slide show (which only takes seconds to do) ... then I sit back and watch say last years trip to France.

I also do digital scrapbooking ... mainly for events like Weddings, children growing up, and again I keep those in a similar set up and watch them as slideshows too.

If I want to watch any of my slideshows on TV or give them to friends I make an iMovie slide show out of them and burn it to DVD.

However I must have lots that I haven't looks at in quite a while :o

Wendy :)

[ljameso1]

I browse through my archives fairly often looking for images for photoclub competitions. I make slide shows of trips that get shown to various groups. I make coffee table books. Use my photos to make my own greeting cards, and of course display them in my home. I also, am pretty ruthless when it comes to editing. When I came back from safari, I had close to 7000 images. Less than 500 made the archive cut and less than 200 made the slide show.

[Bob Chadwick]

I also am pretty ruthless with photos that get saved. I'll shoot 400 - 500 pictures at a kids sporting event and keep somewhere between 25 and 50. Those get put on Flickr for the kid's enjoyment. Some get printed but mostly it's a slide show created by the screen saver that rotates between the pictures. My wife has been known to sit in my office and watch them. :)

My PS3 also hooks to the computer so we have been known to bore our friends with pictures on the TV after a couple of glasses of wine.

I also go through them fairly frequently looking for stuff that I like and play with the editing.

[Lynn Dryer]

I also have lots of photographs and lots of snapshots. After about thirty days I review what I did in the past thirty days and decide if I will ever do anything with a particular photo if the answer is no out it goes.

I have also put about ninety percent of my slides on the computer and that amounts to thousands.

I frequently look at sections of my stored photos looking for a new wallpaper.

I hang some in my home and I will take a photo off the wall to give them to people if they wish (somtimes in the frame and most of the time not). I recently sold a home and the contract included all of my photographs that were hanging.

It is strickly a hobby that I do for my pleasure.

[bnk1953]

For me - I print out those that I really like for our photo albums - 45 - 3" binders w/ archival quality protection and counting; for ones I really, really like - I print out 13X19 prints and get framed - probably getting too many of those.
As far as saving - iPhoto on the comp (pondering a new Mac that has 1TB harddrive) and also backed up on my Western Digital/Newer Tech back up drive and also on DVD's.
As far as going back to look - not much from the digital files - except to reprint or to make a print for friends/family. I do go back and burn up some time looking at the photo albums - as do my kids when the come home (which isn't often enough - but they are on the East Coast and I'm in middle USA).
~bruce.

ps one concern that bothers me - enough archival prints are not being made and digital can still deteriorate faster then the prints...what will we leave for future generations - like we have received the B/Ws from past generations.
~bruce.

[vawitt]

I'm so impressed with all of the ruthless photo-cleaner-outers :D ...I hardly ever toss any image (expect really, really blurry ones!!). Storage is so cheap, and I've actually gotten some good results from photos that I would have originally tossed by applying some technique or tut from this forum.

I do find, though, that I'm getting better at not TAKING so many images in the first place. Because of the 365 blog, I've gotten much more familiar with my camera and the settings, and my original images (2-3 of the scene or person) are better than the (8-9 of each) I used to take.

I do look at my images much more than if I would have stashed them away in albums. Many of theme are on my computer screen savers, both home and work, so I get treated to a mini-vacation when my computer takes a snooze...

[Ric Cisson]

Colin this is very good question, very thought provoking. I am fairly agressive when it comes to editing. Usually I can figure on 10% of original images are non-keepers. Another 20% get sent to a separate EHD for future review and/or use. I have nearly 18,000 cataloged and managed in LR2 now. I have another couple of thousand that are scanned from transparencies or negatives on a hard drive by themselves, that are still in my sort and edit mode, not managed by LR, Bridge, or the Organizer within PSE. I usually sit down for a couple of hours on Sunday nights and review older images, and sometimes I will start a new project with an older image. For example, there may be an element within the image that I like, and might be able work into a montage or an album page. Or I might use an older image to just sit and practice utilizing different tools or brushes with. Many images get incorporated into my lessons that I give locally, I like to change things up a bit.

So I guess the answer to the burning question, from my standpoint, I review and utilize many images in my workings. I go through my catalogs quite frequently in the coarse of a year.

[Codebreaker]

One of the things I've been doing over the past few months is to move my older images - that were handled by Elements Organiser - into Lightroom.

This has meant going over them and re-processing. They'd originally been processed in ACR 2.4 and saved as TIF/PSD after a little further tweaking in Photohop. Now with LR I've reprocessed them and can get rid of the TIF/PSD files.

I'm also suprised at how well I've improved in camera handling. Many of the earlier shots where a little lacking in exposure and framing. :o

Edit: BTW if properly backed up your digital images should outlast your prints.


Colin

[BOBGRUETTER]

I, personally, do not like to repeat myself. As soon as they are into the computer I make a disk and save them all. Then I edit the obvious unworkable from the possibly workable. Then I start, one at a time, and take it as far as I feel necessaryto give me the results I'm looking for. When done with the series, I make a disk of the edited ones, and this is the ones I show. Approximately a year from now I will delete them from The computer, as any one that cares will have viewed them,and I still have the original disk and the edited disk, cataloged and put away. Sure reduces the amount of stuff on the computer. But it does slow down finding a photo I know would go well in a forum discussion. Can't have everything.

Bob

[Bob Chadwick]

One of the things I've been doing over the past few months is to move my older images - that were handled by Elements Organiser - into Lightroom.

I've been doing the same thing, I like the fact the LR has only the one file.

[patkc2000]

Being a fulltime RVer and generally taking 200-300 pics at a whack, I can only imagine how many pics I've taken since 2005.
I use my photos for photo shows, complete with effects and sound. These are done to send to friends and family so they can get an idea where we've been and what we've seen. I also make Christmas slideshows in place of cards. And we like to watch the old shows on "nothing on TV" nights.
I do cull out about a half to 2/3 of the pics I take. At the end of the year I transfer the best photos to DVD so I don't bog down the laptop. I keep a log of our trips so if I want a particular picture I check the log for the date, from that I know which DVD to look at.
I'm hoping when we are long gone our kids and their kids kids will have a wealth of pics to remind them of their crazy gypsy grandparents. Or not. ;)