Bring intention to your camera roll and avoid photo library bloat

Do you take too many photos? When you look at your camera roll, do you wonder why you have 15 of the exact same group shot? Or why you took 10 photos of a plate of food? Suddenly you have 20,000 photos on your phone and you are not sure how you got there?

I do. Not so much with my phone, but always when I take out my camera. I love wildlife photography, particularly birds – these can be difficult to photograph so I take lots and lots of photos. On a recent morning when it was actually warm out I took my camera for a walk along the river looking for some interesting ducks.

I was not disappointed, as I came across several pairs of Red-breasted Mergansers. They were ducking (get it???) in and out of view as the riverbank is full of branches that were in my way. I took far too many photos trying to get the right shot.

Do I really need all of these? No.

In the end, only one was actually worth keeping.

Here is my keeper.

I also came across this guy creeping along the riverbank. For one of my local friends, he was right below your house!

None of these are very sharp, but I picked the best one and deleted the rest.

It can be overwhelming trying to figure out what to toss and what to keep when looking at a series of shots. It is even more overwhelming when your photo library is filled with these series. The key is not to review your photos looking for what to delete, but to review your photos with an eye towards what you want to keep. Flag, favorite or star those, then delete the rest in the series. If you can, do it right away, right after you take the photos. The longer you wait, the more likely that you will never do it and create continual camera roll bloat. It is much faster this way and keeps your focus in the right place. If you don’t you’ll soon find yourself with tens of thousands of similar or duplicate photos that you don’t care about. These photos can get in the way of the photos you actually want, because you can’t actually find those in the bloat.

So next time you take several photos of a group of friends (here’s hoping that is soon!!!), take 30 seconds to find the best one and delete the rest. Don’t wait. If you wait, you won’t do it and will end up with far too many photos that you don’t need. Of course, you can call me to take care of your photo bloat, but this is one quick tip to keep your photo library under control.