Photo Tip of the Week: Don't Delete!

Should you delete your worst photos or hang onto them? Alfonso Calero puts the case for keeping every photo you shoot – even the ones you hate.

01 TECHNOLOGY GETS BETTER
I am amazed at the speed that imaging technology is changing and how much easier it is to manipulate images than it was even a few years ago. Programs like Lightroom, Aperture and Capture One Pro make it easy to tweak white balance, push and pull exposure, make local tonal changes and dramatically reduce image noise. An image that would have been unusable a few years ago can now be significantly improved with a few clicks of a mouse. It was only recently that I went back to my old external drives and discovered a series of photos I'd forgotten about from a shoot in Japan. I didn't do anything with them at the time but I'm glad I kept them – and because I shot them in RAW I was able to enhance them in Lightroom, reducing some of the noise that came from using an older small-sensor digital camera in low light. Who knows what technological improvements are coming next? A new tool in the next version of Adobe Photoshop is designed to correct image blur caused by camera shake. That might save a few pictures from the digital trash can!


Several years ago, in the town of Yokote, Japan, Alfonso Calero was invited to visit a local school. He spoke to the Japanese English teacher and offered her a free 15 minute English lesson in exchange for a portrait shoot with her students. He recently came across the Raw files and used the latest version of Lightroom to reduce some of the noise that had arisen from using an older small-sensor digital camera in low light.


02 YOU GET BETTER
Just as technology gets better over time, so do you. With time and experience your eye and your editing skills will improve and you will be able to do more with your photos. A small crop can be enough to turn an uninspiring image into something special. You may not have the skill or experience to see that now, but you may have a different perspective (and new skills) in a few years time. As time passes and your perspective changes, you may find that you have a new appreciation for work you'd previously dismissed.

With time and experience your eye and your editing skills will improve and you will be able to do more with your photos.


03 PHOTOS IMPROVE WITH AGE
You can't underestimate the power of photographs to become more interesting with time. A street scene photographed now may seem mundane, but in twenty years time you will inevitably marvel at the strange clothes, unfamiliar hairstyles, classic cars and old buildings. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion and your photos will have more of it the longer they are around. If the photo albums of our childhoods are anything to go by, even the blurry, under-exposed, strangely coloured photos are worth holding onto. 


Most images become more interesting with time.

04 MEMORY IS CHEAP
The number one reason for deleting images is to free up space. That might have made sense a few years ago but not now when memory is so cheap. These days, a high-quality 'brand name' 16GB memory card goes for around $30 while a 1TB (that's 1,000 Gigabytes!) hard drive costs less than $100. At those prices, why would you bother throwing an image out? Unless the photo is of the back of a lens cap, hang onto it!


This Western Digital Elements 1TB Portable Hard Drive retails for $75 at Harvey Norman. Do you really need to delete photos to free up space? Just get another drive.

Born and raised in the Philippines, Alfonso Calero moved to Australia at the age of 15. He graduated from the Sydney Institute of Technology with an Associate Diploma in Photography in 2001 and has been professionally photographing food, portraits, landscapes and travel subjects ever since. He started a travel education and tours company four years ago delivering workshops every Saturday morning in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Fremantle. He also takes groups of four people to Japan, Philippines, Spain and Tasmania once a year for 10-14 day photography workshops.