Make Deleting Photos Your New Best Daily Habit
Make Deleting Photos Your New Best Daily Habit
Nothing will teach you more about the photos you create than a daily “take-out-the-trash” routine. Not only will it help you stay ahead of clutter overwhelm, but you’ll start to see the photos that work and the ones that don’t so much. Culling the iffy and just plain bad pictures while they’re fresh in your mind is a powerful learning experience.
It will make you a better photographer. In fact, it’s the little secret of most professional photographers that for every awesome shot of theirs you see, there are huge trash bins (digital) of photos that never made the cut. Learning what to show is just as important as learning what to photograph in the first place.
All it takes is about 5 minutes a day. A short coffee break. Waiting in the car. Queued for curbside pickup.
Here’s what to do:
1) On your iPhone, open Photos and go to the Photos tab. If you tap it a second time, Photos will scroll all the way to the bottom. We’re going to start at the most recent and work backward.
2) Touch the All Photos button to see everything in your Library.
3) Handle any clutter - signs, labels, notes - that are unnecessary. Delete or move them to Notes / Evernote / Folder.
4) Make a pick from sequences - doubles, triples, etc. - that you’ve done. For some reason I always take doubles of portraits. If they are too close to decide, I generally pick the last one in doubles and the middle one with triples. That's just me.
5) Some pictures just don’t work at all. Seemed like a good idea at the time but just didn’t work. A pair of loons way out in the middle of a lake is like that. If you have to explain a shot, it doesn’t work. Please delete those.
6) After 2 or 3 minutes of that, pop over to Years and scroll back to older photos, choose All Photos again and do the same exercise there too. It’s a great way to clean up your Library AND enjoy some old memories in the process.
I know that it's hard sometimes to hit the trash icon, but it will feel cleaner and be easier to navigate. Your Library will feel more like a portfolio and less like a junk drawer. And remember that your discards will live in the "Recently Deleted" Album for about 30 days before finally going away. So if you really feel contrite about something you got rid of, you do have some time to rethink it.