Get rid of the garbage !

Okay you have a milion pictures (you're idea of a million of course being 500-1000 pictures). You need to start weeding out the bad stuff. Let me use an quick comparison to help put things into perspective. Imagine you're out at a five star restaurant and you've ordered a fillet mignon cooked medium rare with a horseradish butter and a side of fingerling potatoes coated and pummeled rosemary and butter with a  side candied baby carrots. The meal arrives at the table and you have this perfect dish and also you have some meatloaf and a double cheeseburger with a can of chef boyardee and a handful of andy capp hot fries and a candy bar and assorted other side dishes and small meals. The idea here is that while you have all these great little things by themselves they spoil the original meal that you had.  How great would that experience of the fillet mignon be if you also had candy corn and fried chicken next to it, it wouldn't make it seem as special right?

If i've totally lost you here i'll break it down again. When you pair a really good set of pictures with mediocrity it lessens the value of that picture. As a photographer if i handed someone two really great pictures accompanied by fifteen bad pictures it softens the impact i wanted to make with those two great photos. You want to show that you can shoot great pictures and do that regularly and when you present a set of photos and only two are really good out of seventeen it doesn't reflect that well on you, you might as well say it was an accident that those two came out so well.

When looking back on your memories, your photos that you've taken try to keep the beef and get rid of the fat. I've had to do this with my own photos. I've taken a look back at pictures from disney world with my family and seen some great family photos and mixed in there are bad photos of park benches or a ride that will be there for the next 30 years that i don't care about it. I don't need a picture of a bird that was sitting on cement eating crumbs if it's framed horribly and there was no purpose behind it.  You'll be much happier looking back on these photos if you see a pattern in them, family & friends or scenic location.


So stop clinging to mediocrity and start improving your archives.