How many photos do you have?

[AllynD]

I have become so organized with LR, that now I know how many photos I have on my computer: 9,850! That includes about 2500 scans of old photos, and over 7,000 digital photos taken by both my DH or me from 2001 (when we got our first little digital P&S) to today.

This does not include over 500 scans that are on their way back to me from ScanCafe, nor does it include about 15 years worth of my kid's growing up photos that are on film and haven't been scanned yet. I will certainly have 15,000 before long.

What in the world am I going to do with all these photos?????? Most of them, quite frankly, are terrible. But they are pictures of my children, DH, or my mom, and I am not going to delete them because they are precious to me.

We probably have more photos of each of our children's first month of life than either my DH or I have of our entire childhoods.

How many photos do you have?

[MIDA78466]

I don't even want to count!! Too many!!

[katrinak]

14,960 and ummm that is only 2008 and 2009...

[mum2gnt]

I am in the same boat - photos not good enough but I want to keep them! I was thinking of putting them in a photobook trype digital album and just printing a whole book of pretty much all the photos you wouldn't use for scrapping or printig or friends and family! And then put them onto cd or whatever medium to keep (just in case!) and *DELETE* from your hard drive!!!
That's my plan anyway! But when you look through old albums there are never too many photos and you always get a good idea of kids growing up or holidays or whatever just from a few. I always delete the out of fucus/eyes shut/whatever photos straight away or you will end up with millions! But NEVER DELETE OFF YOUR CAMERA!!!! Always delete the whole lot as each time you delete you loose quality on your camera card! A bit like a JPEG image - every time you change something it reduces the quality. Better to delete from your computer once they are all downloaded.
But remember you have still got heaps of years worth of photos to go on there too from the future - so best start sorting now!
That's my advice!
Suzie

[Aino]

I also have too many to even bother counting! On two computers none the less....

Since I got Lightroom, I do most of the editing of photos there and I have gotten better at deleting from the hard drive photos that are not good. I stick to the best ones. And the almost-best ones.

I was not aware that deleting off the camera is not good. Will have to remember that.

[hguenthe]

21,799 since going digital in 2000... not too many a year until recent years or years we had big trips or our wedding/honeymoon year when we took a lot more... but the real jump came this year with 10718 photos so far not counting the ones I just cleared off my memory cards getting them ready for SA... and over 3500 of those are kitty photos since they were born about 6 weeks ago

Must do some housecleaning as those almost 11,000 are all raw and take up an enormous amount of space.

[neonglow]

It's totally ridiculous, something like 18GB. That's also after I went through and got rid of stuff and archived a bunch of my folders! I keep meaning to pick up an external hard drive, but I know I'll pay an exorbitant amount for it and then I'll see it for crazy cheap on sale somewhere else

[KerryMac]

Let's just say that if I were a ship, I'd sink under the weight of them.

And in addition to the digital photos, I have thousands of prints from film and lots of slides.

I'm pretty sure I could construct a small house out of them.

[AllynD]

Originally Posted by neonglow

...I keep meaning to pick up an external hard drive, but I know I'll pay an exorbitant amount for it and then I'll see it for crazy cheap on sale somewhere else

If you have a Costco near you, I just bought a 1TB Western Digital for $129 last week.

[neonglow]

Originally Posted by AllynD

If you have a Costco near you, I just bought a 1TB Western Digital for $129 last week.

Ooh, we do! Have you used it yet? What brand is it?

[AllynD]

Originally Posted by neonglow

Ooh, we do! Have you used it yet? What brand is it?

Western Digital-- it's the "My Book Home Edition"-- Western Digital is the only brand of EHD I will buy. Since I had a Seagate go bad on me I won't use those, or any other brand.

The My Book Home Edition has USB 2.0, Firewire 400 and eSata, and comes with the USB and Firewire cables. It has a 3 year warranty, too.

[kminton]

OH! I had to laugh when I saw this! I have soooooo many. . . not a clue as to the number of them. I even have hundreds that are not good - but my son took them, so I can't delete them b/c to me its like seeing the world as Jaden sees the world.

I also have this fear of something going wrong with my EHD . . . but I also have all my photos loaded onto Shutterfly - so if my EHD goes bad . . . at least I have Shutterfly, right? I thought about storing them in yet another location "just in case" but then I start to feel like I'm being a bit obsessive . . .

I also like to have printed copies - mostly so that my boys can sit down with an album and leaf through it.

[neonglow]

Originally Posted by AllynD

Western Digital-- it's the "My Book Home Edition"-- Western Digital is the only brand of EHD I will buy. Since I had a Seagate go bad on me I won't use those, or any other brand.

The My Book Home Edition has USB 2.0, Firewire 400 and eSata, and comes with the USB and Firewire cables. It has a 3 year warranty, too.

That's fantastic, thank you for letting me know! I'll definitely be making a trip to Costco this weekend.

[janedee]

I have around 12,000 right now, that's after deleting all the bad ones. I still have boxes of old photos to scan too.

[quilter422]

let's see, 22,000 and change. and that doesn't count a bunch i don't keep on my hard drive anymore (they're archived to our server). and it doesn't count the boxes and boxes of old pictures.

[bluelemur01]

I'm guessing over 50K but I haven't counted. And, like Katrina, that's just the past few years. I am very bad at not deleting all my old .jpg and .raws that I don't need. But I keep thinking, "I love this shoot of X or Y. And even though I've editing the pics NOW, what if I get better at editing or want to do something different and need the RAW shot again in a year? or Two?" Not that I ever HAVE gone back, mind you...but my hoarding mentality keeps me keeping them! We have three backup drives. One is used as a "regular" drive where I store photos, and the other ones do redundant backups.

J

[dugarner]

Originally Posted by bluelemur01

I am very bad at not deleting all my old .jpg and .raws that I don't need. But I keep thinking, "I love this shoot of X or Y. And even though I've editing the pics NOW, what if I get better at editing or want to do something different and need the RAW shot again in a year?

Well, I recently did a purge and got down to 9,000 or so, since 2005. I keep just the best ones of a series, at most I'll keep three in case I want to print a triptych, but I figure I don't need 250 of Bailey sticking her tongue out.

Funny about the RAWs, I just got a subtle hint from a friend who is a serious amateur (his stuff is amazing) that HE doesn't even keep RAWs. But my "nondestructive editing" instinct keeps me even from changing the RAWs. I apply whatever processing to them, then process the JPEG, but keep the RAW SOOC. I might be a little obsessive. Storage is cheap, so why not move the RAW files off and leave them alone? They're not hurtin' anyone! But in my case, I did get better at editing, and some crappy JPEGs were saved because I had the original RAW files, and went back and re-processed them. I'm known to have a heavy hand and tend toward over-sharpening, and would hate to mess something up permanently.

As hubby says (passionately), "Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it!"

I also have a few thousand APS frames I've not scanned. Someday.

[maureenreynolds]

Iphoto has 17K+ and there are a couple hundred in the scans. None of this includes the pictures dh has and he went digital about 4 yrs before I did. He was the photographer but then I got fed up with his pictures ...shhhhhh. :-P Now his are often better than mine!

Lynn, I was waffling in Costco about that EHD because HE wants to share one. Since I do all the scrapping with any of them, it would make sense because he is sick of giving me a flash with his latest batch. Small price for my services I think!

I agree that sometimes the ones that look like carp are the ones you treasure years down the road.

[AllynD]

Sarah-- I share that philosophy but it has gotten me in a lot of trouble over the years! I am a packrat!!!

Maureen, too funny! Actually a big EHD with all the photos to share makes a certain amount of sense, doesn't it? I don't have that trouble because my DH takes lots of photos but he never, ever transfers them or even looks at them again, as far as I can tell.

[Gabi]

I'm so happy to read this thread. I thought that only I have too many photos!! I'm on the same boat as all of you, girls and I just hope and wish that our back ups won't fail. It would be a disaster.

[Blossom]

I had a count last August (2008) and my EHD had 52.000 digitals photos on it. And since then we have taken app 10.500 photos after what I see and I know I don't have all of my DHs photos in the EHD. The photos are mostly from 2001 when we got our first digital + a couple of hundred scanned ones.

That's the problem when we have 3 SLRs, 3 compacts and 4 cell phones to take photos with and you got 4 photo crazy persons in the house.

[sweetpeony]

7,000 on my laptop, mostly 2009 and some unscrapped from 2008 (like my Christmas photos!). I'm not looking on the EHDs, too scary. You guys are right about rigorously weeding through photos. I take a bunch, and there's no point in keeping 10 in a series or anything that doesn't make me happy for some reason.

[Myra]

I've got over 28K in my LR catalog, dating back to 2005. But I would like to trim that way down. Too many rejects. I recently saw a tip to make a smart catalog of rejected photos so you can easily go to that catalog and weed out the photos you don't want regularly. Sometimes I don't delete in the moment, but that would help me find the ones I forgot to delete. I thought that was a great idea.

[THAT-GIRL]

OMG what a thread... !!!
I don't know really how many pictures, but I do delete or "weed" IN CAMERA... so I don't clutter my hard drive... and you know what... I DON'T MISS THEM... just taking them out and forgetting you ever had them... that makes life easier... LOL

[mugsbigsis]

I have 9309 with 1379 missing files. (happened when I tried to transfer to my new EHD)

[AllynD]

Oh, no, Kelly! That would drive me absolutely nuts! I hope they somehow reappear for you!

[Cassie Jones (1gr8muggle)]

Since I haven't uploaded since before the SA crop, I can't be precise. But this is what my LR catalog has (and it's not even EVERYTHING I have on my HD).

Ready?

25,254.

[KarenM2]

Ummmm, yeah, about 25,000. And considering that 1300 of them were taken this month since buying my AWESOME new camera & going away for a week on vacation, I'd say I'm in for some storage issues in the future!

[ValerieP]

It is so nice to know that I am not the only one with so many pictures! I have no idea how many I have, but I did take 400 at Zion last week-end and several hundred more at various other places on the way to SLC and back! I have them on the computer. I upload them to Costco-high resolution and then have discs printed-I love their discs because they have mini pics on them and it is easier for me to figure out which is which. But, it took 3 days to upload photos from my road trip to SLC and to South Carolina the week before. I also have them on an EHD but I already had one fail, so I dont put much trust in them-fun thread, maybe someday I will actually count them all. BUt beyond the new I take, I am scanning in all the old of my boys growing up and that is going to takes eons of time. They arent very good quality, but they exist and the story needs to be told. I also just got a dvd of what exists of my childhood-my dad took 8mm then and so I will need to get some screen shots off of those-other wise no-one will know who anyone is/was!

[Denise Gormish]

About 25,000 digital photos from when I first got a digital camera in November 2001. When I got my digital SLR the numbers really rose. The last 12 months is 7,000 photos.