Losing precious data is always in the back of our minds as photographers. What happens if a client comes back and wants more photos? What happens if, three years from now, I decide to randomly edit photos from this one particular photoshoot? What if I don’t keep every one of the 1,647 photos I took last night?
I recently got over my fears and decided it was time to delete some of my photos. Not only for my own sanity — I was getting tired of starting a new Lightroom Classic catalog every year because it simply got bogged down — but also for storage needs.
Why I started deleting photos
I recently picked up a pair of 4TB SanDisk Extreme Portable SSDs to replace my aging external HDDs and hopefully free up some space on my Drobo 5D3. I quickly discovered that I hadn’t picked up enough SSDs to meet my goal (I was never good at math).
But then I realized something. I had started this year by using AfterShoot, and as a part of that, I was only importing the photos I needed into Lightroom Classic. I deleted the rest, which allowed me to focus only on the photos I would deliver to my clients.
So if I could do that with my current photos, why couldn’t I go back in time and delete archived photos that I know I would never touch?
Simply put, I knew that’s what I needed to do. So I went ahead and started deleting photos from my drives.
How I did it
I worked inside of Lightroom Classic, as it allowed me to filter by color label and edit status, but also certain metadata like file type. For me, I use color labels to signify photos to edit, photos that were “finished” and those that were exported for a client. So this was easy to just exclude the yellow, green and blue color labeled photos.
But I also didn’t want to delete any TIFF files I may have brought into an external editor, and that I forgot to label. So I excluded those as well.
I went folder-by-folder as I did this, focusing on the folders with several thousand images. Once I deleted these photos from my drive, I went into the smaller folders and again filtered them to delete.
How much room I saved
I started out having around 12TB between 2010 and 2019. When I finished, I got down to 7TB total. This was easy to split between my two new drives — one for 2010-2015, and another for 2016-2019.
But … what about?
Yes, I know deleting photos sounds nerve-racking. Especially doing it all at once as I did. But I had a few things going for me.
One, all my photos were backed up to Amazon Photos and/or Backblaze. So if I realized I deleted something I shouldn’t have, I could easily have gone back and restored these files. It’s important to double-check your catalogs after doing this, just to be sure you didn’t inadvertently delete something. Luckily for me, it looks like I was in the clear.
As a note, Amazon Photos doesn’t delete your photos, even if you remove them from your hard drives. Backblaze holds on to your photos for 30 days by default, and then removes them (unless you pay for a longer window).
Additionally, I haven’t yet done this for 2020 and 2021. This will be a larger task, as my 2021 photo library alone is over 3TB. And I can tell you that they aren’t well organized. But that’s my next task.
Finally, I still have photoshoots where I keep all the photos. Why? Simply put, I don’t use AfterShoot for every photoshoot. I mainly use it for events and portraits. When this happens, I don’t cull as aggressively. But at some point in time, I’ll go back and delete images I haven’t processed or used in any way. Because if I haven’t used them in a year … what’s the likelihood that I ever will?!?
If you’re questioning whether deleting photos is too drastic of a step, ask yourself when the last time was that a client asked you to go back and try to find more photos that you didn’t give them already? Especially from a shoot that’s several years old? Personally I’ve not once had that happen.
Deleting photos is far from a crime. It’s a sigh of relief!
Deleting photos gives you storage back, lets your Lightroom catalog breathe a bit and helps you stay on top of your photos better. While I was worried about this, when I started not keeping every photo, I felt like I was done culling and editing quicker than I ever had been. I got my time back. I got my storage back. And it lets me focus on creating more than ever.
