Things I Have Learned from Photography #16

16.     Delete pictures that are not good.

I have been thinking about this because I am, once again, trying to make better sense of my Lightroom catalog of 36,176 pictures.

Lightroom and I never have an easy relationship. Last month I could not install the update. This is a new problem after 10+ years of using the software. It only took a couple of goes at it and about two hours of time to find out I needed something that I did not have. Apparently I have it now, which is good, because it would have taken me a couple more goes at it and about two more hours of time for a do-over. This month the update was problematic. It took all of my 2020 pictures and jumbled them into the 2009 folders. I got really panicky, but I finally found the files and got them back in order. It only took a couple of goes at it and about two hours.

But to get back to the issue of deleting pictures that are not good. A lot of times, it gets down to the question of which one or ones are the least good. I truly have about 10 minutes of that kind of decision before I am nigh on losing my mind. And I never know where to start. You would think at the beginning, but that is discouraging. It turns out I have improved as a photographer. Looking at old pictures that I was so proud of in the past is not a good scene.

Today I tried something new. I added the key word street-photographer to all pictures that were remotely related to street photography in a batch of my 2009 files. That can be done rapidly. I am never going to delete family pictures or bird pictures and looking at architectural pictures is way more than I want to do. It was much, much easier to just consider the subset of street-like pictures. I was able to quickly make the call of “in” or “out” and it was fairly satisfying.