You are into photography, you own a digital camera, you have a big memory card and storing data is fairly cheap, so you take a lot of pictures. And when I say you, I mean me, I’m talking about myself.
What inevitably happens with digital photography is that you end up with a lot of pictures that you don’t actually use. You never really have to worry about whether or not you have enough film, so you can just keep snapping pictures like a Japanese tourist that lives in all of us.
Let’s say I do a self portrait series, I shoot approximately 60 pictures, I discard 30 unfocused or otherwise just really bad shots, before moving the rest to the computer. I go through all the pictures, I keep flipping between two almost identical ones, to see which is better, and finally I select maybe 6 to be processed and published. What I have left is some 20 plus pictures that have no use for me right now, or maybe not ever.
If I were reasonably and organised, I would probably go through all the pictures more carefully after every shoot, and discard more of the picture I think are not that great. But alas, I am not. Once I move the pictures from the memory card to my computer, that is it, I don’t remove anything from the set. I know I will not use most of the pictures, but I can not bring myself to throw them to the trash.
Hoarder
My hoarder genes come out strong in here, I am very afraid to throw pictures away. What if I need the three almost identical ones for something in the years to come. The subtle changes in posture, angle or facial expression make all the pictures different and I might later need them. And what if there is a hidden gem somewhere, that I will only see years later? Sometimes I might just need a simple picture to accompany some writing.
I don’t remember who, but I heard someone once say that the value of photograph might only reveal itself after years to come. For example, a person in the photograph dies so you will never have the change to photograph him again, or an old beautiful building collapses and you now hold a piece of history in the form of a photograph.
Lost images
I’m going to justify my picture hoarding tendencies by saying that I have thrown away old pictures that I now miss and wish I had them somewhere. Most often when I have been looking for a certain set of pictures, I have them on a shitty Instagram form, with a boring ass filter on top, but the original is nowhere to be found.
For some time, I shot in RAW on and off, bit of a love-hate relationship, and I wish I had RAW files of everything I have ever shot. I now shoot in exclusively on RAW. It would be interesting to go back to those old photos and see what I could do with them with them now that I am better at both photography and post processing than I was some five years ago.
Challenge myself
I should challenge myself to take less pictures, quality over quantity. I think that at some point there was a challenge “Shoot like film” floating around the photography enthusiast community in Steemit. It would be a huge challenge for me to limit myself to only, wait, how many pictures does the regular film roll have?
Fucking millennial who has never owned a film camera. Though I do have a polaroid camera, so kinda the same thing in terms of having to be more selective of what to shoot and not just snap away.
I have to start going through my old photos and figure how to use the ones that haven’t been out of the confines of my computer. Of course not every picture is good enough and not every picture needs to be shared. There are some private moments that are not for the rest of the world. You know, home made porn and stuff. I’m kidding! Don’t steal my external hard drive.
I like this post. Maybe because I got pretty much the same feelings about all those "never exposed" shots in my countless HDD 's lying on the shelf. Maybe one day I get a use of them, if.... only I will be able to find an IDE HDD connection. One thing I'm diferent is I do remmember well how many shots used to be on film. My first cam (55 years ago) was making 12 shots, each rather large 6 x 6 cm. Then it was 24 and 36 shot films. I even have owned a cam wih half size frame, which could fit 72-74 shots on a 36 film
Thank you! I'm happy to hear that I'm not the only one struggling with this. 36 shots isn't too bad, I think I could get a good photoshoot with that limit, I need to try it!
36 was quite enough, not a problem at all those days. More difficult was waiting days and weeks before the film is full, then you prepare all those liquid chemics , get a free hour or two to close yourself in the dark room, and develop it. And then, finally, voila..... you could see those shots. To see if anything good at all came out of it. Weird feeling, almost like playing lotterry.
I think i still have one undeveloped, almost full film waiting in one of my old abandoned cameras. Untouched for 25 years or so....
I wonder if the film is still viable, would be really cool to see what you got hidden in there!
I just looked to your profile. I see there is maybe 1400 liquid steem/sbd. May I ask one thing ? Is there any specific reason you do not power-up them ? Myself, i am powering up everything the same moment I claim. Daily. Even 2-3 times a day.
It's because I am a full time Steemian, this is my means of making a living, so I need the liquid Steem to pay bills, buy food etc etc.
Ok, got it. However it is very hard to imagine for myself, as i only buying more steem (and other cryptos) since my day one, and never cashed out into FIAT even a penny.I have lost all my trust in FIAT, and i hope i will live long enough to see FIAT dissapear from this planet. This is my wish #1 these days.
Money or any currency is meant to be used. What is the point otherwise?
Hello! I like your blog, especially your photo shoot. you have a beautiful figure. I will now go to the gym in order to make my figure like you :)
By the way, this is for you for a good mood.
https://steemit.com/art/@yakubenko/i-drew-a-portrait-of-a-nice-girl-eveuncovered
this is not spam. I just painted your portrait. Maybe you missed it.
Have a good mood!
Thank you so much for this, I had indeed missed it because I don't check my mentions every day. You just made my day! ❤️
I'm very glad❤️❤️❤️
The unused (or should we say, unpublished?) photograph lying in our storage has the minimum value of 1 person keeping it. :D
I'm into photography too, and have accumulated a lot of unshared photographs through the years. I just control the volume by asking: is a photograph acceptable to me as is, without edit? If no, then that photograph is deleted immediately, unless it's the only one I have of an important/unique scene.
You are very strict with your photos! Quality over quantity is always better, but I'm still scared of discarding pictures!
My new drone fills my 64gb memory card up in little over an hour. I also have almost 4tb of storage but I have almost run out of it. I never delete pictures because every time I do, it ends up being an important picture which I would've needed in the future
Ahh yeah, videos is a bit different, takes up a lot more space!
I've been shooting surf photos since i was a kid before they built the pyramids... well, maybe not that long. When i got into digital it was great. Figuring out what to do with all of them as the cameras got better and faster and files got bigger and took up more space was a constant juggling act. Your post reminded me i used to shoot digital like it was film and didn't shoot very many shots. After a short time i realized it was ok to just get more memory cards and shoot more waves. Not all were great or keepers and i used to spend hours on end deleting shots. Oh, wait did i mention i started buying external hard drives and storing shots there and not on my computer?
Oh, oh looks like i'm hitting the "too many thoughts too fast type with two fingers threshold"... but i digress.
Hmmm, i totally lost my train of thought...
Oh, yeah... here we go. My first external hard drive was 1 terabyte and it was expensive! Now i use 4 terabyte ones and the price is pretty cheap. So after all this writing i think i'm tryin to say i don't do much deleting at all anymore. Whew that was exhausting
Storing data used to be a lot more expensive, we got it good nowadays. I have a 1 terabyte hard drive that I need to get into at some point, I know there must be a lot of old photos I would like to see now, probably most are super shitty. But as I have a MacBook, the old hard drive can't be opened on this, I need to borrow someones PC to get everything out of there.
You can probably change the formatting on the hard drive to work with the Macbook. I can't remember how to do it though. Useful informant i am! haha. I would be afraid to do it without copying the entire thing to another one first. That's always a good idea anyway
Growing up I was big into photography. My mother gave me the Pentax film camera my father left behind. It was the 80s. A roll of film cost a few dollars and developing it at the local pharmacy was over $10. I think she regretted giving me that camera. I was limited to shooting one roll of film each week.