What do you do with duplicate pictures?

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Yair

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So you come back from a birds or animal photo shoot and you have more than a 1000 images. You choose the ones you like you edit and keep them.
What do you do with the duplicates (That many of them are still amazing)
I choose the ones I like and delete the rest even though many of the deleted images are just as good as the ones I chose.
Thanks
 
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Yair said:
So you come back from a birds or animal photo shoot and you have more than a 1000 images. You choose the ones you like you edit and keep them.
What do you do with the duplicates (That many of them are still amazing)
I choose the ones I like and delete the rest even though many of the deleted images are just as good as the ones I chose.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Trash
 
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I’m going through 50 years of negatives and slides and as I delete most, I find some that I like all of a sudden. I scan anything I think I might like later. I agree now with digital, save everything close to focused on a ssd or hard disk. Ya never know.
Vinny
PS: I found a few shots that weren’t tack sharp but worked for creating artwork in Photoshop.
 
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I only keep the ones I process unless there is an interesting sequence where there may be 20-60 frames of raptors fighting mid air or something similarly interesting.

So i could take a 1,000 or 1,500 shots a day and cull it down to 15 shots or maybe 250. There is never a need to keep anything that after your decide what you like best of 30 similar images or what have you no matter the cost of storage. With the Z9 of I only deleted what was soft or out of focus is hardly delete anything. I'm getting 90-95% sharp images.

For example, I live near 3 places that get crazy active with Bald Eagles 3 or 4 times a year. Like 200-300 concentrated Eagles for 4-6 weeks at a time. There's no reason to keep all images 30,000-50,000 images a season. It just gives me more reason to go out any keep shooting them. If i kept them all I'd be really bored and uninterested in processing them. At this point I only shoot behavior like fighting, talon locking and Ariel acrobatics.
 
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I do my culling right after import to Lightroom As has been said, I keep some sequences, selectively cull others and keep one or two from the rest of the similar images.
 
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EricKlees said:
I only keep the ones I process unless there is an interesting sequence where there may be 20-60 frames of raptors fighting mid air or something similarly interesting.

So i could take a 1,000 or 1,500 shots a day and cull it down to 15 shots or maybe 250. There is never a need to keep anything that after your decide what you like best of 30 similar images or what have you no matter the cost of storage. With the Z9 of I only deleted what was soft or out of focus is hardly delete anything. I'm getting 90-95% sharp images.

For example, I live near 3 places that get crazy active with Bald Eagles 3 or 4 times a year. Like 200-300 concentrated Eagles for 4-6 weeks at a time. There's no reason to keep all images 30,000-50,000 images a season. It just gives me more reason to go out any keep shooting them. If i kept them all I'd be really bored and uninterested in processing them. At this point I only shoot behavior like fighting, talon locking and Ariel acrobatics.
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For me it is about the same. I live in South Florida very close to a nesting site of Wood Storks, Great Blue Herons, Great Egrets and other birds (no bald Bald Eagles here :cry:) . I take a lot of pictures each time I go out to shoot and enjoy looking through them and process and keep only the most interesting ones. (kinda heart breaking to delete so many great pictures...)
 
Yair said:
So you come back from a birds or animal photo shoot and you have more than a 1000 images. You choose the ones you like you edit and keep them.
What do you do with the duplicates (That many of them are still amazing)
I choose the ones I like and delete the rest even though many of the deleted images are just as good as the ones I chose.
Thanks
Click to expand...
As I review images from a shoot, I pick out the obvious keepers, then ask myself “what’s the likelihood I’ll ever come back to this image?”, and end up deleting a good many. The one exception was a recent trip to Alaska to shoot brown bears - an experience I’m unlikely to repeat anytime soon - I ended up keeping a majority of the images, and deleting only the obvious duds. Normally, I’m pretty heavy handed with my delete key. Life is short and I’d rather be out enjoying nature’s glory than sitting behind a computer screen dreaming about past experiences. Besides, who’s to care about my photo library once I’ve ascended to the great shoot in the sky? 😊
 
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Abinoone said:
As I review images from a shoot, I pick out the obvious keepers, then ask myself “what’s the likelihood I’ll ever come back to this image?”, and end up deleting a good many. The one exception was a recent trip to Alaska to shoot brown bears - an experience I’m unlikely to repeat anytime soon - I ended up keeping a majority of the images, and deleting only the obvious duds. Normally, I’m pretty heavy handed with my delete key. Life is short and I’d rather be out enjoying nature’s glory than sitting behind a computer screen dreaming about past experiences. Besides, who’s to care about my photo library once I’ve ascended to the great shoot in the sky? 😊
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Loved your post! Very true! I know that, at least in my case, no one will care about the tons of great images in my computer. Yes, great to go out to nature and shoot, luckily for me I like being behind the computer working on my images.
 
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EricKlees said:
For example, I live near 3 places that get crazy active with Bald Eagles 3 or 4 times a year. Like 200-300 concentrated Eagles for 4-6 weeks at a time.
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What are those locations you mentioned? I’ve been to Conowingo but I’m eager to know of other locations in Maryland where bald eagles can photographed.
 
These days the paradigm has shifted. Used to be throw away the duds and keep the rest. Now it's pick the winners and toss the rest.

Used to be bad to 'spray and pray.' Now even folks being thoughtful and careful have 20 near duplicates.
 
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Yair said:
So you come back from a birds or animal photo shoot and you have more than a 1000 images. You choose the ones you like you edit and keep them.
What do you do with the duplicates (That many of them are still amazing)
Click to expand...
Only "1000", you must have great self control. Much better than I. I delete with abandon, out of 1000 I would most likely not have more than 50 when I finished. Many photographers are still dealing with "Monica Lewinsky syndrome". :)
 
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JAJohnson said:
What are those locations you mentioned? I’ve been to Conowingo but I’m eager to know of other locations in Maryland where bald eagles can photographed.
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Sorry, they are sensitive areas. One is a spot only 4 or 5 people can fit to shoot, the other you have to use private land to reach.

The place this year for short eared owls, before this year about 15 people knew. The wrong person found out this year and when you go, 50-80 people are there everyday. Place fits about 12 cars and now, the police sit there starting at noon to tell everyone if a tire is in the grass, it's a ticket and automatic tow. The owls are so pressured, they are moving out of the area early this year.

I'm not saying you'll be that person but I generally don't give locations to areas that are sensitive or on private land
 
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Yair said:
So you come back from a birds or animal photo shoot and you have more than a 1000 images. You choose the ones you like you edit and keep them.
What do you do with the duplicates (That many of them are still amazing)
I choose the ones I like and delete the rest even though many of the deleted images are just as good as the ones I chose.
Thanks
Click to expand...
What Rik said…at DeSoto and 1300 frames became 1100 or so after the out of docus and clipped wings were deleted and became 23 or so for the blog but the rest are still in LR but no stars or flags. Drives are cheap.
 
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For wildlife, I generally delete duplicates and apply a very strict cutoff for what I keep and edit. Even if I have duplicates of a typical image, unless it is a great image there is no need to keep a second or third version. For a great image, I'll keep similars and duplicates because there might be a level of detail I don't notice on normal viewing that makes one image better than another. For example, focus might be slightly better on one but you can't tell until it is highly magnified. For social media it would not matter, but for a large print or for a competition, it could make a difference.

For lower volume work such as landscapes, the number of duplicates is very small so I follow my normal workflow and keep everything that is not an obvious delete. In this scenario I don't want to spend the time to examine every image in detail, so my workflow is to discard the bad images, pick my selects, and edit my selects only. The images that are not selected for editing are kept just in case I need to look at them closer - so it's a time savings to keep them.
 
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RikWriter said:
Huh. I'm able to fit every single RAW image I've ever taken in Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Alaska in the last 18 years onto two $230 Samsung 4TB SSD external HDs. Not seeing a downside to keeping them.
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I have 24TB on my 6 bay NAS. 6 4TB ironwolf drives. It's not about space, I'm ruthless about culling. No need to keep unneeded basically redundant images to have to flip through needlessly.

I get some like to keep everything, but the people that don't had nothing to do with storage space
 
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EricKlees said:
I have 24TB on my 6 bay NAS. 6 4TB ironwolf drives. It's not about space, I'm ruthless about culling. No need to keep unneeded basically redundant images to have to flip through needlessly.

I get some like to keep everything, but the people that don't had nothing to do with storage space
Click to expand...

If it's not about storage space or expense, what is the reason?
 
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When it comes to wildlife photos I eliminate instantly any image that either some sort of misfocus (e.g. neck instead eye/head) or in which the animal does not have interesting pose or look.

More generally, after I have worked on the pictures I am keeping, I might label or put in a separate folder for later reconsideration. Some that don't pass these two filters might survive if I can think of them as "I don't mind sharing this and would not care if it's misappropriated by someone else".

When I am in period of not shooting much I might revisit the "later reconsideration" photos to see if I am in the mood to process them, toss them away or keep them a bit longer. Then I go quickly over the non-categorized survivors and do instant delete on anything that does not give an instant sense of "leave it for another day"

I must say, however, that to the extent that I have revisited photos, they tend to be older. They tend to be photos that clearly can get a second chance with today's software.
 
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