The Power of the Delete Button

Every photographer is bad about this. Every last one of us. I know many photographers who advise keeping every single shot you take. In my experience, though, this generates a heap of images that get in my way more than they help. I’m certainly not suggesting you get rid of all the images that don’t make it to the final selection in your storytelling workflow—rather, I’m proposing that you...er, we—be judicious about whether we keep images that fall short of even deserving to be in a collection for your story.

Photographs with poor focus, weak composition, and other issues, compared with other, similar images that are in focus, have strong and leading composition, and stand a chance of being used in the current and future stories, will simply continue to pile up until they’re a menace to your workflow and your overall storytelling abilities. Delete them.