Freedom by using a "X"

Before I get started on my journal entry, I’d like to wish all of the dad’s out there a very Happy Father’s Day!  I hope you have a great day!  :-)

Photographic workflow is a topic that I find really interesting.  It is something that I’ve commented on from time to time here on my journal, and I’m always curious to see what other people are doing with their workflow.  Most of the my focus here has been on the electronic side of the spectrum; what do you do with all those files that you’ve generated on your camera?  Sadly (?) I actually enjoy asking that question, and I believe that plays a big part in being an efficient, effective photographer.  As i work mostly between Lightroom and Photoshop for my cataloging and editing, I will not be able to comment on other products like Aperture or Bibble, but I believe that the main focus can be applied to those programs as well.

The last couple of weeks, I’ve been once again auditing my own workflow.  Specifically, I’ve been making a more concerted effort to become more organized inside of Lightroom, with the focus being to make it easier to find what I’m looking for, and to streamline my content.  To help me on my quest, I have been reworking and deploying my keywords lists/sets, (smart) collections, and labels/ranking.  

Well working on this, I came across a very obvious truth which I had been avoiding to acknowledge:   I have a lot of “crap” photos.  By “crap” photos I mean unnecessary duplicates, photos that should be ranked under 3 out of 5 stars, and would never serve any other purpose than to take up space on my hard drive.  This is when I discovered the “X” key.  “X” in Lightroom is the keyboard shortcut for flagging a photo as being rejected.  As I started to parse my photos, I found my self X’ing groups of photos at a time.  The more I did it and by the time I was done I had flagged approximately 900 photos as rejected.  At the end of the session I selected the “Delete Rejected Photos” command and after giving them a once over, deleted them from both my Lightroom catalogue and my computer’s hard drive.

Boy did that feel good, and to think that was only from vacation last October and Christmas of 2009.  Since then it has become easier to X photos, and I have gotten into the habit of performing this function during the first review after importing a new batch of photos.  One of the benefits to shooting digital is that it allows me the freedom of taking as many photos as I want.  But it is the control of all that content that becomes critical after you’ve taken it.  

I encourage you to audit your photo catalogue and to make a habit of purging the “crap” content.  By utilizing tools like keywords, star ratings, and collections, you will very quickly be able to start organizing your content.  It will make you feel better, I guarantee it!  

Comments

[Kristelle]

This is very helpful to know! Thanks. - Happy Father's day to you!

[Jared]

Thanks a lot Kristelle!