Doug Herr
Well-known member
I don't have enough fingers & toes to count either photos or years.
How many photos do you have and over how many years?
- Thread starter TurtleCat
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Not another disk. I use OWC 4 bay thunderbay systems. 4x disk for each system. 1 system is my primary, one is backup in the house and one is backup in vault. 12 large (22-24 TB drives - up from 12 16TB).Hi Rich, that's a lot of photos! Losing 600k is going to be some work, probably cheaper just to buy another disk and call it a day
I'll keep sorting. Hope to knock off 100,000 images sooner than later
joe43
Well-known member
Starting in 2009 ? with a D200 and now with a Z9, D850 and D500, I have about 22-25 TB of images on my hard drives. I have never tried to figure out how many RAW images. I have done culling over the years but not to the degree I would do it today. I have started to delete unneeded images using Steve's suggestion posted above.
My wife wishes I would spend more time culling out closets and rooms of stuff not needed. I get no credit when I tell her I deleted xxx images today.
My wife wishes I would spend more time culling out closets and rooms of stuff not needed. I get no credit when I tell her I deleted xxx images today.
This is an interesting poser…I’ve been shooting SLR’s since 1965. There are boxes of negatives and transparencies I have been digitizing and dozens of albums with photos to scan. I currently have 15K catalogued in my computer. More to go…. Goes well with coffee in the morning or wine 
in the evening… 
in the evening… 
Let me know if you ever run out of bad images. I’ve got boatloads!Lightroom says I only have 621,000 since 2016.
Now, if only there were a keeper or two in there...
Oh, it's worth noting I generally don't delete anything since I sometimes need examples of "bad" images / mistakes for my educational efforts. That, and I'm lazy.
Too many to count over too many years to which I’m willing to admit.
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lukemeup
Well-known member
I cull without mercy. I create a new LR catalog each year and at the end of the year I probably have something in the range of 2500-3000 images. For me there's no point of keeping images unless I deemed them good enough after 2 passes I normally make while culling. Life is short to be going back to those that don't stand out.
I really don't know how many I shot, only how many in my LR catalog. I do occasionally deleteToo many to count over too many years to which I’m willing to admit.
I have approximately 275,000 in my backup drives. I've taken about 450,000 since 2008 when I started using my current file name and numbering system. I do delete - pretty aggressively for wildlife. Every image since 2010 is rated and almost all are keyworded as part of my basic ingest using PM. I have around 13 TB of images stored on dual 8 TB drives - so it's near time to add more drives. I have more than 25,000 images in my Smoky Mountains archive alone, about 10,000 from the Okefenokee, and around 15,000 from the PGA Tour Championship.
I concluded there was little value in trying to go back and change previous images. Storage is cheaper than time. If I make a change, it's from the current period forward.
I know a few images from the early days of digital were deleted, and knowing what I know now with current tools could have been edited very nicely.
tcrick
New member
I have a small sports photography business and have amassed over 150,000 images since 2011. I have probably deleted 3 or 4 times that many. I have about 20,000 photos in personal albums and have deleted very few over the years.
Niels.hr.Hansen
Well-known member
I'm currently traveling, so not sure about the whole plethora of images in the home server. But this month it has come to 2447 that has not been deleted in culling. But then during my travel I have been taking photos every day, especially 3 safari days have delivered many shots that I have deemed usable. If I remember the total since 2003 runs close to 70,000
CJC2
Member
I am a sports guy and shoot @ 125,000 shots per year. although I don't teach, I'm also to lazy to delete. Should you need any BAD shots for your classes Steve, just ask!Lightroom says I only have 621,000 since 2016.
Now, if only there were a keeper or two in there...
Oh, it's worth noting I generally don't delete anything since I sometimes need examples of "bad" images / mistakes for my educational efforts. That, and I'm lazy.
Not A Speck Of Cereal
Well-known member
About 145k, RAW only (no intermediate, work, or export files counted), digital only (none of my film/slides from pre-digital counted).
My LR catalog has 218k images, mostly in main folders 197x/198x/199x/200x/201x and 202x, which gives an idea of the time distribution. But, not is all as it seems. Somewhere around 2008 or 2009, I started shooting digital and by far the overall majority is digital now. However, around 2010 I scanned approximately 15k slides/negatives myself. It was worth every minute of that endeavor to have older shots easily available and I remain very glad that I did it. That then extended into old slides/negatives from parents and other family members. All this by way of saying, essentially, disk is cheap and images are a cheap "time machine" .
I tend to not shoot in large bursts, and my import process includes a pass or two of deleting images I'll never, ever use. That makes it hard to draw any inferences about total shot count. I never look at the shutter counts on my bodies.
I tend to not shoot in large bursts, and my import process includes a pass or two of deleting images I'll never, ever use. That makes it hard to draw any inferences about total shot count. I never look at the shutter counts on my bodies.
TurtleCat
Well-known member
Lol, I feel like I need to take more pics now.
RikWriter
Well-known member
I have no idea as my images are stored in about 30 portable hard drives in a plastic tote and it would take hours to add them all up. I've been taking pictures with a digital SLR since Canon released the 300D Digital Rebel in 2003 and given that I have about 50 folders from specific photo trips on my hard drive and I tend to take 3-4000 pics on each of those, and since I would back in the day make 3-times-a-week journeys to the local wildlife preserve and take hundreds of photos each time, I'm guessing the total over the last 20 years has to be somewhere near half a million.
Well, I have several boxes full of negatives from my film days, and something like 7 hard drives full of digital files. It makes my head spin to even imagine counting them all up.
57,000 still in Lightroom Classic since I started in 2009.
MarkB
Member
I have about 50,000 in Lightroom, but I have an additional uncounted number that I took before I started using Lightroom and then there are the film days and I believe I have 10 or 12 photo albums full of prints. I'm very good at culling my photos, I used to keep all of them but found that of my ratings of 1, 2 and 3 stars that I rarely if ever revisited the 1 & 2 star images so I've started just deleting them after I've processed all the 3 stars and am certain I don't want to revisit the 1s and 2s. My first digital images were taken in 2005 and I probably shot film for 10 years before that.
Dick Blystone
Member
10 years in LR, I have 37K images (culled aggressively by rating). 1 year with my Z9, I have 40k images (culled for sharpness only, generally). Recently, I wanted to get my best RAW images saved in the cloud, so since I tend to post my best couple after each shoot on Flickr (jpeg), I managed to identify the corresponding RAW files and upload them into SmugMug - 11 years, ~3000 images, 76GB.
My current workflow needs... work
My current workflow needs... work
According to my database (PhotoSupreme) I have 149,357 since 2008. Then on an older PC I have my iMatch database covering 2004-2007 but I am not sure how many are cataloged there as I'm too lazy to fire it up right now. And I guess we aren't counting slides, of which I have innumerable boxes and Kodak Carousels dating back to the 1970's. I am what I would say a "medium-culler", I don't cull as many as I should (I just can't bear to delete big cat photos unless they are really terrible!) And as Steve said, I am lazy too and it's just so tedious to cull. But I am trying hard to be more merciless. I usually come back from a photo trip (be it safari or bird-focused) with over 10-15K of photos and try to get it down by at least half. My recent trip to Botswana yielded 18K and I'm still culling and sorting--I've been home over a month! Luckily it's winter here, not a good winter bird year in NYC and I've not been out photographing anything since I got back. I just need to catch it up before my next safari at the end of February!