Delete with a Hard Heart

I took photography lessons some years back and on the last day, our teacher, Leo Castillo, gave us some helpful tips on how to make our photos better. One of which is to read Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way”.  It is about the 12-week program to recover your creativity from a variety of blocks, including limiting beliefs, fear, self-sabotage, jealousy, guilt, addictions and other inhibiting forces, replacing them with artistic confidence and productivity. But if there is one lesson I will particularly remember that really stood out, it is this: delete ALL your photos. As in delete?? Yes, he said! I was not that hard-hearted then so I did not comply. Might have done wonders to the quality of the photos I shoot now if I did!

Digital photography’s almost limitless capacity for storing photos is both a boon and a bane. Photographers of the old days found photography expensive in terms of time and money because aside from paying an arm and a leg in order to see printed versions of their shots, they have to wait a day or two before they can receive the prints.

During the early part of digital photography, storage was expensive. So they also practiced deleting unworthy photos to save on memory, both portable and in the computer.

But soon, the prices dropped and the pixel (and megabyte) counts went up. And everyone just kept shooting more and more.

Today, coming back from a vacation with 500 shots is not uncommon. Back in the day, that will be equivalent to about 20 rolls of 24 exposure film. But now, it’s so easy and cheap.

We had an exercise where one of our instructors, Karlo De Leon, took note of the file number of our last photo in the camera. This will ensure that we don’t cheat. Then we were told to take only four photos. Only four. The best we can find. No room for shutter-happiness. And we were forced to really compose our photos well before pushing that shutter.

Anyway, he said, we don’t need 40 shots of a sunset.

But should the shutter bug bites again, here are some tips on how to unclog our memory cards and hard drives with photos:

In Camera

If you have downtime during your travels like sitting in the airport during long layovers or traveling on the bus to the next destination, delete photos while they are still in your camera. Look for the obvious rejects: blurred shots and under or over exposed shots. The camera screen is too small and is not always the best view at discerning minute details, so don’t spend too much time zooming and being too critical.

First Pass

After download, do a first pass on the computer. Here, more blurred shots can be discovered and deleted. The obviously improperly composed shots can be deleted too.

Second Pass

It’s now time to stop being nice. Be totally honest with yourself at this point. Be ruthless. Delete the duplicates and choose only the best shot among the same set of subjects. Choose the best sunset, the best group picture where everybody is in it, the best jumpshot, etc. Be ready though to have the following thoughts creep: This is nice. I like it. A bit. And it’s not too blurry. And hey I’m cute here. But just be honest. If you are not going to print it, nor include it in a web album to be shared, nor use it to enter a photo contest, nor sell it, nor send it to a friend or family member, why keep it? We can’t hold on to everything in the past. Let it go. Those are just average pictures.

Honestly, this post is also a reminder for myself to do some spring cleaning in my photo hardrive. I’m sure I will be able to free a lot of space. But to avoid ending up with a lot of photos, I better train myself to compose first,  do some adjustments in-cam, then shoot away. And also delete heartlessly the obvious rejects.

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