Over 15,000 boring, unflattering, out of focus and/or embarrassing pictures, were tossed into the virtual garbage pail when I decided to finally begin organizing my photo library over the weekend. I’ve been watching the past ten years of my life flash before my eyes in thumbnail-sized morsels. Despite my attempt at an unsentimental approach, I’m still left with a bloated collection of over 20,000 digital pictures. I would have even more than that if I’d been more conscientious about backing things up over the years. As it is, some of my best photos have been lost to the heartless whims of finicky hardware — my old-fashioned mind’s-eye memories the only thing left to remember things by.
7 Comments
This is why I stopped taking a ton of photos. I find it excruciatingly painful to delete them afterward. And most of them are crap to begin with.
“As it is, some of my best photos have been lost to the heartless whims of finicky hardware”…oh you too? I lost everything from 2005-2007. One of the problems with photography in the digital age–extreme laziness in making “hard copies”. sigh.
i hate this process too, even putting them on disk is hard because who knows when or if they will ever resurface.
Sometimes it’s liberating to burn down your own house.
I just went through this myself – 25,000 photos since Jan 2009. Lotsa crap, but still tough to toss.
kind of refreshing eh
Jamie, FYI for some reason your blog hasn’t been updating automatically on my browser (Safari.) It’s stuck back at the one with the banana pic. where you’re suffering from writer’s block. Don’t know if it’s your fualt or mine, but thought I’d pass it on now that I know there have been several posts since then.