Not Keeping Everything

I've finally realized that it doesn't make sense to keep everything. Not every shot, not every dud. I've decided that it's time to go through my collection of recent photos, many of which I took for practice, and only to keep the ones that are truly worthy of keeping. Not all the failures.

Why am I doing this? I spent a lot of time taking pictures of that mini-book. I took well over 200 photos. I only think that about 25 are worth keeping. That's a high percentage of keepers, but I spent a lot of early trials getting the settings correct. For most shoots, I don't have nearly as many keepers.

When I was a photography student using film, I remember being told that out of a roll of 36-40 shots, there would only be 1 keeper, if we were lucky. I took a lot of pictures, developed a lot of film, and what with developing issues on top of the camera setting issues, if I got 1 keeper from a roll of 36, I was content. Now, I don't have to deal with errors in developing, so I think 1 out of 25 makes more sense.

I've improved my chances. Instead of a 2.5-3% chance of getting a keeper, I've moved up to a 4% chance. Do I really want to move up higher than that? Yes. But that's going to take a lot of work thinking about light and a much more user-friendly tripod.