[RioRico]

O damn, you had to ask!! Many just get squirreled-away for a rainy day. Some get mutilated and tortured, I mean aesthetically processed, into 'art' for my sole and guilty amusement. Some get printed, either for sale or projects or just to astonish. Some go into DVD slideshows -- if we've got trip photos of exotic locales, they may be shown to a local travel club. Too many lately have been "test shots: of various lenses -- I need to get out more, eh? I haven't used any for blackmail yet, but that may be coming.

[CWyatt]

Most of my photos never see the light of day as it were - they get put away and slowly deleted because they're rubbish, while I think 'why is this photo so rubbish?'.

I try and print quite a few of keepers, but I prefer top-end printing so it's a bit expensive too. I find that thinking of what you would print is a good way to cut away average shots. Another good piece of advice I've read is to never show anyone else a photo for which you have to make some apology for, e.g. 'well it would have been better at some other time of day, or if the person was doing this, of if I'd taken one step left'. That gets a bit tough because you can see in your mind what you think the shot should have been, or what you tried to get, but if the photo doesn't cut it, it doesn't cut it.

I guess all my keepers end up on the net on my website. However I'm slowly changing my mind about what exactly a 'keeper' is and slowly siphoning some old keepers into B-side folders I save away on a backup drive to look at and think about why they weren't better.

I still think there's no better way to view a photo than a tangible, stand-alone print. Second best is a book. Lots of photographers I've discovered through the net, I think they're great and then I buy a (well printed) book of them. It's always infinitely better than some small scanned jpeg doing the rounds on the net. Case in point: I don't even really like landscape photography that much but for some reason I kept seeing Ansel Adam's stuff on the net and it really appealed to me. I ended up getting his printed chronological book '400 Photographs', and it's fantastic. Not only are the images printed (within the constraints of a book) how they were meant to be viewed, but by viewing quite a lot of work, while also having a kind of time-frame over it, you get a much, much better impression of the photographer and their work overall.

[Marc Sabatella]

I couldn't imagine bothering to upload 80% of my keepers - it would be overwhelming to both me and to the poor fool who wanted to browse my pictures. I shoot maybe 10,000 images a year. I "keep" at least 90% of what I shoot (deleing only the out of focus or otherwise completely ruined shots). Most of that never gets converted to JPEG, though, and the RAW files just get moved off to an external drive. Maybe 30-40% of the shots I keep get JPEG's generated and these live on my laptop drive. Of those, maybe 10% are uploaded or otherwise shared with others.

Of the ones that gets shared with others, I'd say 90% of the time it's simply a matter of me uploading them somewhere. Maybe 9% of the time it's me emailing images to someone, and maybe 1% of the images ever get printed - most of those just 4x6".

those never get tons of picture, but I probably upload maybe 5% of the keepers.

[Sailor]

. . . . . . . . But I still need a scheme. At least until they come up with an AI that you can talk to like a Star Trek computer or something.

I hear you, RML. I've got the scheme but not a theme system. I'm an old geezer and can't remember where stuff is - a Star Trek AI is exactly what I need!

Jer

[icywarm]

I like google face rec, it helps me if pics of people I shot often...

[SpecialK]

Oof. *This* is the challenging part for me. While I've been muddling along with pretty improvised computerey storage, things have become rather a virtual 'pile' ...various test photos mixed in with good stuff, all out of order, scattered still over various devices, ...I need a scheme.

....

But I still need a scheme. At least until they come up with an AI that you can talk to like a Star Trek computer or something.

Replace IMGP with yyyymmdd shooting date regardless of what else you do. The free Flexible Renamer is wonderful.

[saien]

Most of my photos never see the light of day as it were - they get put away and slowly deleted because they're rubbish, while I think 'why is this photo so rubbish?'.

Yep, this is me

I go through my photos straight after importing them and delete probably 30-80% of them depending on how the day's gone.

Only the ones I'm fairly proud of make it to flickr, and I'm keeping tabs on the ones I'm super happy with to print a book of one day

[arbib]

A lot of similar answers here...
I preview them in ACDSee Pro 3 and delete any I know I won't work on.. (just started doing this btw), then I upload them to a 1TB external hard drive (I have no images on my on-board hard drive), and name the folder or folders with the main subject and date. after a few months, I will move them to a DVD and forget about them. I haven't really done any keyword or cataloging though, other than the file folder name and date. Typically, I have under 100 images in any folder.

[savcom]

I upload them to a 1TB external hard drive (I have no images on my on-board hard drive), and name the folder or folders with the main subject and date. after a few months, I will move them to a DVD and forget about them. I haven't really done any keyword or cataloging though, other than the file folder name and date. Typically, I have under 100 images in any folder.

Much the same here - although I use FastStone to review. Together with the date goes a location and/or event in the title of the folder and I then sort these onto folders for each year. I don't burn DVD's as it is possible these will decay after 10 or so years so they get archived on two external hard disks.

I've tried numerous 'photo management software' packages but none seem to fit. The one with most promise was Blue Marine, but that seems to have died a death and was slow too.

You know - regarding prints/shows/sharing your photos is not easy. Some I think are 'good' are perhaps not so good when shown to others. And where do you share them? I use flickr, picasa, photobox - even Facebook, and get feedback from some people, but for the most part they stay hidden on my drive(s). Not right, really, is it?

Martin

[stevebrot]

What to do with all those pictures. That is my daughter's pet peeve. I imagine that she is thinking about the inevitable day when it will be her job to sort through all those dozens of DVDs acquired as part of her inheritance looking for the good stuff

Honestly though, it is a bit of a challenge. I have started periodically going through the archives and deleting anything over about six months old that I would not want shown. Then there is the matter of what to do with the keepers:

• I post most of the good stuff to Flickr and then link a portion of those to here and to e-mails to family and friends
• Every once in a while I make an 8-1/2 x 11 print for the coffee table to impress the rare guest
• I may eventually have a few large prints done to hang here in the house

Then there is the challenge of keeping track of everything. I used to keep a detailed computer database of all my slides and negatives. That eventually fell into disuse after the list got above 3000. I currently use Lightroom to catalog both my digital and film work as so:

• Digital files are imported and copied into folders by date
• Negatives and slides are scanned into folders by camera/date of scan and imported into Lightroom at that location. File names indicate frame number and date of scan.
• Appropriate tags are attached at time of import indicating camera, film, etc.
• For the K10D, I started using a custom prefix ("IMP2-") affixed at import to replace the default "IMP" once I turned the 10K corner. At some point I will change it to "IMP3-".
• For negatives and slides, I use Lightroom to print a proof sheet for each roll that is stored with the originals. This allows easy look-up of a negatives in particular.

So far, so good...

Steve

[Votesh]

Most of my photos never see the light of day as it were - they get put away and slowly deleted because they're rubbish, while I think 'why is this photo so rubbish?'.

This is the same for me . Usually, as soon as I put images on my computer I delete at least 50%. Everything that definitely will never be used in any capacity is gone. If I go through the folder a few months later, I will usually delete about 50% of what's left. Out of the remaining 25% of the originals, I will process maybe 20%.

So that leaves me with 5% of the original shots fully processed. These are saved in a "Favorites" file on my computer, and all of my pictures, processed or not, go to an external hard drive as well. I used to put all of the pictures I processed on Flickr, and probably will again. Right now I don't have proper internet access to do so.

The very best I will print, or at least plan to print. So far I have only printed about 20 images out of more than 35000 taken since I got my K10D.

Right now I am trying to motivate myself to overhaul my photo collection, go through them all, delete the ones I don't like/need, reprocess the ones I really like, and make a portfolio or photobook of the very best. Even if I'm the only one that ever sees it.

If I didn't live a nomadic lifestyle(I've live in 6 different places in 3 years), I'd be a lot better about this stuff. One of these days though.

[JeffJS]

Mine go on to the hard drive in the order taken. Real sophisticated, I know. They are sorted simply by date. Folders for a given year and then months of the year within. I can usually remember at least to the month when I took a given photo so it isn't too difficult for me to find. The result is, the My Pictures screen saver cycles through all of them, including the 3000 or so test shots I've made of my dog or the lights on my cable box checking lenses.

I have about 1200 pictures up on flickr, photobucket, etc. About 500 of which are open to the general public view. The rest are family events and are of kids that I don't have permission to publicly post. I wouldn't even if I did. A few of my pictures have been favorited by random visitors which I found kind of flattering.. I print (or have printed) family snapshots to take to events like family reunions. Large poster type prints are made as gifts at christmas time.

I took the time to make One DVD slide show. It was of my grand niece and grand nephews from the time of birth to their current age. I spent days doing it, timing music to the changing of the photos, etc. Though their parents said they appreciated it, I later found the DVDs sliding around on the floor with all the other junk. So I never bothered again. I still have the files and could easily burn more disks but I seem to be the only one who cares about them.

So the bottom line is this, I take photos to please myself. If someone else enjoys them, all the better. I'll sometimes post photos that have some merit to me on the forums, that usually go ignored (posting far less than I use to). If there's a theme to a thread that interests me, I'll post something within but anymore given the typical response, ......

What was your question again??