Delete Your "Less Than Good" or "Rejected" Images?

Bison Feeding in Fog, Yellowstone National Park

Should delete your less than perfect images?  Should you free up your hard drive space and purge your computer of those images that may be slightly out of focus, are poorly exposed, not be as composed as well as they should, etc.  Should you only keep the "keepers" on file? I say no. Why? For several reasons.

First, I recommend keeping your less than good images so you can, at some time in the future, go back through your image library and analyze why individual images were judged as not being good.  I would also analyze the rejected images and the overall reasons for rejecting those images. Finally, I would analyze the percentage of images rejected for the various reasons to really get a handle on why your images didn't meet your expectations.

For example, you look through your library and find you have quite a few bad images, say 5000 out of your overall library 25,000, just to pick a random number.  You library might be much larger or smaller than that and the number of images you deem not usable may be a lot larger also.  When you start looking closely at the bad ones, you determine that 2250, or 45%, are because of missing focus, 1750, or 35%, are because you induced camera shake, 10%, or 500, are because they were not composed properly and 10%, again another 500, were due to badly missing the exposure.  This gives you some real world information which you can use to improve your photography into the future.  It is a worthwhile exercise to examine your past images to understand what you did right and what you did wrong so you can improve.

Second, as editing software improves and new features are introduced, that image you love so much from 10 years ago, but was plagued with camera shake, may, in the future, be fixable.  You might be able to go back and electronically fix an image that is not fixable today.  In the future, other technically bad images may able to be fixed for other reasons as well.  Maybe missed focus will be fixable?  Who knows what the technical future holds for us photographers?

Third, looking at the images you had made in the past is a window into your photographic vision, your photographic history and a look back at your skill levels.  You will be able to see, in a very concrete way, where you have been photographically and compare that to where you are today.  You may see a trend in a good way or bad way and understand that you may want to continue in your present direction or move in a new photographic direction.

Fourth, and one of the best reasons, is that your vision and photographic skills and sophistication change constantly.  Images you once felt were not "photographically" good, viewed today with more experience and a more educated eye, may now be deemed by you a good image.  A composition you felt was better three years ago, may now not look as good as a composition of the same scene in an image you previously passed over.  We all change, learn, grow and get better, vision-wise, as well as technically.  By looking over old images, you may find a number of them in your library that now are deemed "keepers" because of the evolution of your skill sets.

Keep your rejected images and periodically use them for your analysis and improvement, as well as potentially being able to fix technical issues in the distant future and because you have changed and gotten better with time and experience.

Thanks for looking.  Enjoy!

Dennis Mook

Many of my images can be found at www.dennismook.com.  Please pay it a visit.  I add new images regularly.  Thank you.


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