How many do you keep?
 

I was just wondering how many pictures we produce that just don't make it. A fleeting moment that turned into a load of rubbishy pixels. Usually on a single roll of 36 frames I single out maybe 4 to get uploaded to the site. I wouldn't say I'm enormously selective, just looking to improve.

Out of the photos you take, roughly what fraction do you keep? What fraction would you put in a portfolio to present to a stranger?

A very small quantity really, much smaller since I switched to digital. I used to regard one "good" shot from a reel of 24 to be reasonable hit rate. With digital, I'm much, much more inclined to experiment and try things out. They don't often work, so the keeper rate is proportionally much less, but I'm sure learning a lot in the mean time. Exactly what kind of proportion I'd put in a portfolio to a stranger would depend very much on what the portfolio topic was and the kind of techniques I'd need to use to obtain the shots in question.

I think I'm just a hoarder I keep every shot.

It used to be on CD once every month or two. Now I fill a DVD every outing. However the computer HD copies get culled mercilessly the remainder are processed, then saved onto ext. HD. Finally a gallery kept on the PC containing between 2 and 5% of each outing's shots.

Ummm, depends what I'm shooting:

Portraits, landscapes - 1 in 5 is my target as these are staged / planned shots
Snapshots (shooting from the hip as it were)- 1 in 10 if I'm lucky
Macros - 1 in 15 due to narrow DOF, tricky targets etc
Abstracts - 1 in 3 as these will be staged /setup

Like Graham I'll keep ALL shots as I'll frequently re-visit shoots and find hidden gems or new angles that I missed first time.

Carl

Hi there, I also keep all shots. I have a library of thousands of negatives and slides going back at least 25 years. They are in storage and are something for the kids to sort out when I'm gone :). Digitally I keep all shots on two x 1TB external hard drives. I grade each shot in Aperture when I download from the camera cards and anything I rate three stars and above stays in the Aperture Library in my computer drives for current use. The Aperture library is also backed up to a separate dedicated drive.

Personally I don't keep any that are not in my opinion technically and photographically good, or have a story to tell. Having said that, even the story tellers have to be what I term useable! I ruthlessly erase all non viable RAW files, I make large TIFFS (16 bit) and small JPEGS suitable for the web out of the best ones I have selected. I then save the RAW files to DVD complete with a text file depicting what the contents are, (I don't rename RAW files) and delete them from the hard drive. The TIFFS and JPEGS are saved onto DVD with titles and a text file, they are also left on the hard drive in subject named and dated folders. I don't remove these files until the hard drive starts to become too full, that is approx 3/4 full, that's a lot of files on a 250gb partition (I can afford to lose them because they are all backed up). As soon as I've downloaded and saved all the RAW files onto hard drive and DVD I format my Compact Flash cards, I make sure that's the first thing I do after a shooting session. I never go out with a previous session still on the Compact Flash card, that's a recipe for disaster.

nirofo.

Gosh, these figures amaze me. I bin anything that isn't perfect so a 32Mb memory stick is enough for me!

I was talking to a very good photographer I know about this very subject only last week. On a morning shoot he might take about 400 shots of which only a couple are keepers. He was saying that as you improve you raise the bar and consequently you keep less shots the better you get.

Obviously, as Andy pointed out portrait shots will be different as you will be pretty sure that the shots you have got will be as desired so the hit rate will be much higher.