How do you define a "keeper"?

**pres589** · 08-07-2016, 09:32 AM

How do you folks think of "keepers"; are they photos you would print? Or just photos you wouldn't delete? Obviously this is more a digital question and shouldn't be taken in regard to processing. Either with or without some PP work, what's your definition of a keeper?

biz-engineer · 08-07-2016, 09:51 AM

I review shots with 4x quick zoom, if it looks ok, it can be printed, if not ok at 4x preview, the shot is not a keeper. Wrong shots include:
- does not look as expected from composition standpoint
- duplicates shots, do not contain enough significant difference of view
- wrong exposure (in very high contrast scenes where exposure is difficult) or wrong focus (that happens when tracking and firing too fast or target not under focusing area)
I try to reduce keepers of every thematic photo session to less to about 36 shots (I try to keep what would be on 35mm film roll), even if I shoot 1000 shots that day, I keep only the most relevant shots.
I shoot RAW unless I absolutely more burst depth and frame rate.
I insert a fast SD card (>=60Mbps) in slot #1 (K3,K1) and I insert a slower (cheaper) SD card in slot #2, sequential writing in SD#1 first, no writing in SD#2.
Since deleting photos is time consuming, I do delete photos, I simply move the keepers into SD#2, once I've selected and moved all keepers from SD1 into SD2, and backed up SD2, I format SD1 (never delete source RAW before backing up the keepers from SD2). So, that's how I found useful having 2 SD card slots.

gatorguy · 08-07-2016, 10:09 AM - **2 Likes**

They're keepers if they convey the same emotion or amazement or whimsy your eyes captured. Sharpness, color accuracy and technical proficiency are all secondary. If the picture has no meaning why keep it? If it does why get rid of it?

alamo5000 · 08-07-2016, 10:15 AM

I do lot of weeding and a lot of experimentation.

While I am learning I might keep those shots for a while to demonstrate and for records.

On the other hand if I am out on the street and my lens is splashed with raindrops and my composition is off or if my subject is blurry or anything that gives me a 'meh' feeling...odds are it will be weeded out.

On the flip side if it has some shape form or fashion of 'historical record' or if it has that 'wow' factor then I keep it.

Sometimes I have looked at photos from a yea earlier and was like "nice!" At the time of shooting though hey were merely "ok".

Basically I weed out blatant screw ups but leave everything else.

A year from now if I look at it and it still sucks I will probably delete it too.

**jatrax** · 08-07-2016, 10:22 AM

Depends on the use. For personal use the quality standard is far lower, that awesome shot of my granddaughter that is just a bit soft is still very precious to me.

For work though a keeper is an image that will be printed or sold.

Unlike @Biz-engineer I never, or rarely, review anything on the camera. The take from the day or the shoot goes into Lightroom:
- the initial pass marks everything I do not want with a black flag. this is usually out of focus, poor exposure, test shots, shots of my feet or the ceiling....
- the second pass I select the best shot from each angle or series and mark the rest with a black flag, I often leave 2 or 3 from a series if I'm concerned about the quality
- on the third pass I start looking at images in the develop module and selecting those that might be worth further processing. They either get added to a collection such as stock, fine art, etc for later work or they get a black flag
- as I get time I go to those collections and work my way through the back log. I prefer doing stock work all at once rather than mixing it with fine art work. It is a different workflow and does not mix well for me
- those with black flags generally hang around until the end of the year or whenever I get around to cleaning things up. In lightroom the "delete rejected" command then works to get rid of them all at once. Sometimes the one I thought was the keeper turns out not so well in develop and I can go back to my rejects and see if there is anything else that is usable.

As @Biz-engineer I keep only the good ones, everything else gets deleted. From 1,000 shots I have sometimes ended up with 5 that get used. Other days the keeper rate is 50% or higher. Depends on the subject and the end use of the image.

Note that this workflow is the exact opposite of that recommended by many professionals, who (rightly I think) suggest that you only worry about the good ones and not the bad ones. But it works for me. YMMV

severalsnakes · 08-07-2016, 10:39 AM - **1 Like**

Great question! With the potential to get really philosophical, and I like that. :-)

In my opinion, the "keeper" has to be the shot that has captured the moment, and, like @gatorguy points out, the technical "perfection" of the image is secondary to the spirit of the image. If it's a little off-square, or a little out-of-focus, but the moment is there, then it's kept. It's harder for me to justify keeping an image where the exposure (light) is completely wrong, but thankfully I shoot everything in RAW and a lot of those files can be saved.

The longer I shoot (and I've only had DSLRs since 2013), the more cut throat I am about the images I take and make. But because I'm being more careful about getting the shot in the first place, I have less work to do when I upload the images into Lightroom and start culling. There are times when I'm out for a walk with my camera and see something that might be worth firing the shutter... but once I look at it through the viewfinder and do some more careful thinking, I skip it.

I also think it's a good idea to take multiple shots of the same subject. Look at it, walk around it, see it from a different angle, in a different light - the subject caught your eye, but you ought to explore it and make sure you tease out whatever it may be hiding, something subtle that you didn't notice at first glance... Don't just point and snap and walk away... This will increase the number of shots you take, and decrease your "keeper" rate, but maybe you'll end up being pleasantly surprised by the exercise...

Mathematically, with all those things considered, my personal keeper rate is about 10% on average. If I take 100 shots, I end up polishing and publishing maybe 10. (This rate doesn't apply to family snaps, where I pretty much keep everything.)

**pres589** · 08-07-2016, 10:49 AM

Good feedback, good ideas shared. I can relate to jatrax's suggestion that personal use shots have lowered standards.

I'm trying to get together photos from a trip for a print & show event as part of the local monthly art crawl, which is a first for me. My ratio of total shots taken to shots I want printed is, well, quite low.

**robgski** · 08-07-2016, 11:05 AM

EDIT: I realize I didn't really define what make a photo of mine a "keeper". It has to be one that I'm willing to share without reservation or explanation, one that shows another viewer what I was trying to capture without me telling them what that was. It doesn't have to be technically perfect, but should be very close to it.

Unless it's a picture of a family member, or a once in a lifetime shot, I try to be objective and brutally honest in assessing my own pictures and culling. If I can improve the photo by some cropping or a little PP, I'll keep it, otherwise, I look at it, assess what I did wrong, check my setting and make a mental note, then I delete it. most of the time, I am looking at thumbnails, if the picture doesn't grab me and make me look more closely at a small size, it probably won't look much better at full size. If I am under a time crunch, I will at least save a good thumbnail shot with a name, so I know to come back to it. Every month or quarter, I delete a lot of unlabelled shots before I move them to the backup drive.

I try not to take a shot unless I am sure it's the right shot, except for those rare instances of "blink and the moment is gone". This lesson was reinforced after evaluating a lot of pictures from a two week vacation, I just don't have the patience to review, let alone save, a picture that isn't really very good. Some shots I convert to B&W, they look better, and more compelling that way, but if not, it's gone.

The Single In challenge has been great for that discipline, I narrow it down to one, and often delete the other 5-10 shots I took that day. Unless I'm doing a study of an object, or a landsape, I look for the one to 3 good shots and dump the rest I know I am probably not going back to look at them and save them otherwise. I agree with te comment above that rathr than shooting multiple shots from the same position, walking around the object if possible, or at least viewing it from another angle, will often give one a better idea of what makes the object worth photographing, and often gives one an idea of how best to photgraph it.

stevebrot · 08-07-2016, 11:23 AM

Anything I like and am willing to share.

Steve

**jatrax** · 08-07-2016, 12:04 PM

Originally posted by pres589

I'm trying to get together photos from a trip for a print & show event as part of the local monthly art crawl, which is a first for me. My ratio of total shots taken to shots I want printed is, well, quite low.

I don't keep track of how many images I actually shoot but just guessing I'm sure I do not keep more than 25% all told. I have 60,000 images in Lightroom. Of those about 8,000 are in my stock portfolio and less than 800 are in my fine art portfolio. And really both of those could be reduced to maybe 25% and sales would be the same. Meaning likely less than 25% of my portfolio has actually ever sold. The rest are either back log or personal images.

For shots that actually get printed and shown, I suspect that means less than 200 out of maybe 250,000 taken. And I have a rather bloated portfolio. I know people making a full living from fine art photography and show less than 20 different images at a show.

A pro I respect once told me "a tightly curated portfolio is your best asset". He meant be absolutely ruthless when judging your images, show only the absolute best work you have. Sadly I do not often live up to that but I keep trying.

victormeldrew · 08-07-2016, 02:26 PM - **1 Like**

The easy answer is that a keeper is anything I don't delete!
- I always delete the 'misses' from a burst of frames when I was trying to catch a moment.
- I always delete black or white frames when I do something drastically wrong.
- I used to delete slightly missed compositions or poor exposures or poor focus, but as my tastes have developed (along with my PP skills) I have realised that perfection is rarely that important to an image.

Here is an image I would once have deleted almost as soon as I took it. I actually took it by mistake. Instead I processed the hell out of it and rather like the result...

**southlander** · 08-07-2016, 09:20 PM - **1 Like**

I delete anything out of focus or missed the moment (eg cut off half of a moving object).

I hang onto everything else, working on the theory that hard disk spare is plentiful and cheap.

The 'keepers' are the ones I put the most post processing effort into and grade these with star ratings in Lightroom.

The starred photos tend to make their way to my on-line photo storage for sharing and downloading to my portable devices - these devices act as my 'photo albums' these days.

From a 2 week holiday I might take 1000-1200 photos and about 1 in 10 would make it through to the on-line storage.

If I had a targeted photo outing where the reason for going out is to take photos, the keeer rate might be 1 in 3 or thereabouts.

What I have found as I get better with photography is that the culling process is getting harder as there are far fewer complete rubbish shots and many more that are worthy of some post processing effort. Embarassment of riches???

kadajawi · 08-09-2016, 01:13 PM

I only delete photos that are far beyond recovery. Storage is cheap. I might revisit the photos and find that there is something I didn't appreciate at first, but do now. Happened to me before. Plus you can recover more and more photos that were thought terrible. Photos that I don't care much about get converted to lossy DNG, that way they don't take up much space.

**Kerrowdown** · 08-10-2016, 02:58 PM

Originally posted by pres589

what's your definition of a keeper?

Ones that might earn me some money.

**gaweidert** · 08-10-2016, 05:17 PM

Keepers are had to define of me. If I like it I keep it. In 2014 I took a detour through Yellowstone on my way to visit family in Las Vegas. When I got home I processed those shots I liked and ignored the rest. Well just today I revisited those shots and found another 15 or so than now appeal to me so they are now in my folder documenting that trip. .

08-07-2016, 11:05 AM	#8
robgski Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: Shenandoah Valley, Virginia Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 8,817	EDIT: I realize I didn't really define what make a photo of mine a "keeper". It has to be one that I'm willing to share without reservation or explanation, one that shows another viewer what I was trying to capture without me telling them what that was. It doesn't have to be technically perfect, but should be very close to it. Unless it's a picture of a family member, or a once in a lifetime shot, I try to be objective and brutally honest in assessing my own pictures and culling. If I can improve the photo by some cropping or a little PP, I'll keep it, otherwise, I look at it, assess what I did wrong, check my setting and make a mental note, then I delete it. most of the time, I am looking at thumbnails, if the picture doesn't grab me and make me look more closely at a small size, it probably won't look much better at full size. If I am under a time crunch, I will at least save a good thumbnail shot with a name, so I know to come back to it. Every month or quarter, I delete a lot of unlabelled shots before I move them to the backup drive. I try not to take a shot unless I am sure it's the right shot, except for those rare instances of "blink and the moment is gone". This lesson was reinforced after evaluating a lot of pictures from a two week vacation, I just don't have the patience to review, let alone save, a picture that isn't really very good. Some shots I convert to B&W, they look better, and more compelling that way, but if not, it's gone. The Single In challenge has been great for that discipline, I narrow it down to one, and often delete the other 5-10 shots I took that day. Unless I'm doing a study of an object, or a landsape, I look for the one to 3 good shots and dump the rest I know I am probably not going back to look at them and save them otherwise. I agree with te comment above that rathr than shooting multiple shots from the same position, walking around the object if possible, or at least viewing it from another angle, will often give one a better idea of what makes the object worth photographing, and often gives one an idea of how best to photgraph it. Last edited by robgski; 08-07-2016 at 11:53 AM. Reason: because I am too wordy without making a point

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08-07-2016, 09:32 AM	#1
pres589 Site Supporter Join Date: Jan 2014 Location: Wichita, KS Photos: Albums Posts: 4,533	How do you define a "keeper"? How do you folks think of "keepers"; are they photos you would print? Or just photos you wouldn't delete? Obviously this is more a digital question and shouldn't be taken in regard to processing. Either with or without some PP work, what's your definition of a keeper?

08-07-2016, 09:51 AM	#2
biz-engineer Pentaxian Join Date: Feb 2015 Photos: Gallery Posts: 12,241	I review shots with 4x quick zoom, if it looks ok, it can be printed, if not ok at 4x preview, the shot is not a keeper. Wrong shots include: - does not look as expected from composition standpoint - duplicates shots, do not contain enough significant difference of view - wrong exposure (in very high contrast scenes where exposure is difficult) or wrong focus (that happens when tracking and firing too fast or target not under focusing area) I try to reduce keepers of every thematic photo session to less to about 36 shots (I try to keep what would be on 35mm film roll), even if I shoot 1000 shots that day, I keep only the most relevant shots. I shoot RAW unless I absolutely more burst depth and frame rate. I insert a fast SD card (>=60Mbps) in slot #1 (K3,K1) and I insert a slower (cheaper) SD card in slot #2, sequential writing in SD#1 first, no writing in SD#2. Since deleting photos is time consuming, I do delete photos, I simply move the keepers into SD#2, once I've selected and moved all keepers from SD1 into SD2, and backed up SD2, I format SD1 (never delete source RAW before backing up the keepers from SD2). So, that's how I found useful having 2 SD card slots. Last edited by biz-engineer; 08-07-2016 at 09:56 AM.

08-07-2016, 10:09 AM - 2 Likes	#3
gatorguy Moderator Join Date: Feb 2015 Location: Central Florida Photos: Gallery Posts: 6,093	They're keepers if they convey the same emotion or amazement or whimsy your eyes captured. Sharpness, color accuracy and technical proficiency are all secondary. If the picture has no meaning why keep it? If it does why get rid of it?

08-07-2016, 10:15 AM	#4
alamo5000 Pentaxian Join Date: May 2012 Posts: 2,962	I do lot of weeding and a lot of experimentation. While I am learning I might keep those shots for a while to demonstrate and for records. On the other hand if I am out on the street and my lens is splashed with raindrops and my composition is off or if my subject is blurry or anything that gives me a 'meh' feeling...odds are it will be weeded out. On the flip side if it has some shape form or fashion of 'historical record' or if it has that 'wow' factor then I keep it. Sometimes I have looked at photos from a yea earlier and was like "nice!" At the time of shooting though hey were merely "ok". Basically I weed out blatant screw ups but leave everything else. A year from now if I look at it and it still sucks I will probably delete it too.

08-07-2016, 10:22 AM	#5
jatrax Site Supporter Join Date: May 2010 Location: Washington Cascades Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 12,991	Depends on the use. For personal use the quality standard is far lower, that awesome shot of my granddaughter that is just a bit soft is still very precious to me. For work though a keeper is an image that will be printed or sold. Unlike @Biz-engineer I never, or rarely, review anything on the camera. The take from the day or the shoot goes into Lightroom: - the initial pass marks everything I do not want with a black flag. this is usually out of focus, poor exposure, test shots, shots of my feet or the ceiling.... - the second pass I select the best shot from each angle or series and mark the rest with a black flag, I often leave 2 or 3 from a series if I'm concerned about the quality - on the third pass I start looking at images in the develop module and selecting those that might be worth further processing. They either get added to a collection such as stock, fine art, etc for later work or they get a black flag - as I get time I go to those collections and work my way through the back log. I prefer doing stock work all at once rather than mixing it with fine art work. It is a different workflow and does not mix well for me - those with black flags generally hang around until the end of the year or whenever I get around to cleaning things up. In lightroom the "delete rejected" command then works to get rid of them all at once. Sometimes the one I thought was the keeper turns out not so well in develop and I can go back to my rejects and see if there is anything else that is usable. As @Biz-engineer I keep only the good ones, everything else gets deleted. From 1,000 shots I have sometimes ended up with 5 that get used. Other days the keeper rate is 50% or higher. Depends on the subject and the end use of the image. Note that this workflow is the exact opposite of that recommended by many professionals, who (rightly I think) suggest that you only worry about the good ones and not the bad ones. But it works for me. YMMV

08-07-2016, 10:39 AM - 1 Like	#6
severalsnakes Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2013 Location: Kansas City, KS Photos: Gallery Posts: 1,612	Great question! With the potential to get really philosophical, and I like that. :-) In my opinion, the "keeper" has to be the shot that has captured the moment, and, like @gatorguy points out, the technical "perfection" of the image is secondary to the spirit of the image. If it's a little off-square, or a little out-of-focus, but the moment is there, then it's kept. It's harder for me to justify keeping an image where the exposure (light) is completely wrong, but thankfully I shoot everything in RAW and a lot of those files can be saved. The longer I shoot (and I've only had DSLRs since 2013), the more cut throat I am about the images I take and make. But because I'm being more careful about getting the shot in the first place, I have less work to do when I upload the images into Lightroom and start culling. There are times when I'm out for a walk with my camera and see something that might be worth firing the shutter... but once I look at it through the viewfinder and do some more careful thinking, I skip it. I also think it's a good idea to take multiple shots of the same subject. Look at it, walk around it, see it from a different angle, in a different light - the subject caught your eye, but you ought to explore it and make sure you tease out whatever it may be hiding, something subtle that you didn't notice at first glance... Don't just point and snap and walk away... This will increase the number of shots you take, and decrease your "keeper" rate, but maybe you'll end up being pleasantly surprised by the exercise... Mathematically, with all those things considered, my personal keeper rate is about 10% on average. If I take 100 shots, I end up polishing and publishing maybe 10. (This rate doesn't apply to family snaps, where I pretty much keep everything.)

08-07-2016, 10:49 AM	#7
pres589 Site Supporter Join Date: Jan 2014 Location: Wichita, KS Photos: Albums Posts: 4,533 Original Poster	Good feedback, good ideas shared. I can relate to jatrax's suggestion that personal use shots have lowered standards. I'm trying to get together photos from a trip for a print & show event as part of the local monthly art crawl, which is a first for me. My ratio of total shots taken to shots I want printed is, well, quite low.

08-07-2016, 11:23 AM	#9
stevebrot Otis Memorial Pentaxian Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Vancouver (USA) Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 42,007	Anything I like and am willing to share. Steve

08-07-2016, 12:04 PM	#10
jatrax Site Supporter Join Date: May 2010 Location: Washington Cascades Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 12,991	Originally posted by pres589 I'm trying to get together photos from a trip for a print & show event as part of the local monthly art crawl, which is a first for me. My ratio of total shots taken to shots I want printed is, well, quite low. I don't keep track of how many images I actually shoot but just guessing I'm sure I do not keep more than 25% all told. I have 60,000 images in Lightroom. Of those about 8,000 are in my stock portfolio and less than 800 are in my fine art portfolio. And really both of those could be reduced to maybe 25% and sales would be the same. Meaning likely less than 25% of my portfolio has actually ever sold. The rest are either back log or personal images. For shots that actually get printed and shown, I suspect that means less than 200 out of maybe 250,000 taken. And I have a rather bloated portfolio. I know people making a full living from fine art photography and show less than 20 different images at a show. A pro I respect once told me "a tightly curated portfolio is your best asset". He meant be absolutely ruthless when judging your images, show only the absolute best work you have. Sadly I do not often live up to that but I keep trying.

08-07-2016, 09:20 PM - 1 Like	#12
southlander Site Supporter Join Date: May 2012 Location: Adelaide Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 1,364	I delete anything out of focus or missed the moment (eg cut off half of a moving object). I hang onto everything else, working on the theory that hard disk spare is plentiful and cheap. The 'keepers' are the ones I put the most post processing effort into and grade these with star ratings in Lightroom. The starred photos tend to make their way to my on-line photo storage for sharing and downloading to my portable devices - these devices act as my 'photo albums' these days. From a 2 week holiday I might take 1000-1200 photos and about 1 in 10 would make it through to the on-line storage. If I had a targeted photo outing where the reason for going out is to take photos, the keeer rate might be 1 in 3 or thereabouts. What I have found as I get better with photography is that the culling process is getting harder as there are far fewer complete rubbish shots and many more that are worthy of some post processing effort. Embarassment of riches???

08-09-2016, 01:13 PM	#13
kadajawi Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2010 Posts: 2,799	I only delete photos that are far beyond recovery. Storage is cheap. I might revisit the photos and find that there is something I didn't appreciate at first, but do now. Happened to me before. Plus you can recover more and more photos that were thought terrible. Photos that I don't care much about get converted to lossy DNG, that way they don't take up much space.

08-10-2016, 02:58 PM	#14
Kerrowdown PEG Moderator Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Highlands of Scotland... "Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand" - William Blake Photos: Gallery Posts: 57,835	Originally posted by pres589 what's your definition of a keeper? Ones that might earn me some money.

08-10-2016, 05:17 PM	#15
gaweidert Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Rochester, NY Photos: Gallery Posts: 5,325	Keepers are had to define of me. If I like it I keep it. In 2014 I took a detour through Yellowstone on my way to visit family in Las Vegas. When I got home I processed those shots I liked and ignored the rest. Well just today I revisited those shots and found another 15 or so than now appeal to me so they are now in my folder documenting that trip. .