To keep or delete?

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

2012 has arrived and I think it's going to be an exciting year... I am particularly excited this year as there are some occasions that I think are going to be quite memorable... The London Olympics will of course be a highlight, my husband has a sabbatical, so I expect we shall do some travelling, plus my children are at an age where they make me laugh every day and I hope to capture and lock the memories as best I can, before they grow up too quickly!

So of course there are going to be many many photographs! On top of this I hope to be photographing lots of other bumps and cherubs along the way. This will of course produce many GB's worth of data on my computer, limiting it's memory, so I have taken the time during these first few dull January days to have a spring clean of my hard-drive, organising my folders, backing up my pictures and deleting one or two as I go...

I have a bit of a dilema deleting pictures and I would be interested to know what other parents do with regards to deleting their family pictures. I am a horder by nature and although I appreciate a good photo, I find it very difficult to delete the bad ones. I have even kept pictures that I have taken of both my girls when they are in tears, because I just don't want to delete anything they do.

I do however look at the handful of photographs that my parents have of their own childhoods and see how precious these little printed black and white keepsakes are, primarily because they are so few. My father was a keen photographer when I was young, so I have more than a handful of pictures of my own childhood that are lovingly kept in one album, but what will my children think about the photographs of their childhood when they are older, when there really are so many and what does a parent do with the thousands of pictures that don't even make the digital books that we produce nowadays?

Clearly I have too many pictures and I made it my mission these last few days to cut down on the amount of pictures that probably won't be looked at in the future. There are different kinds of photographs that you take as a parent: The ones that are jaw-achingly gorgeous, where the smile is so big, you can hear your toddler laughing; Then there are pictures that capture memories of places you visited, people you saw and things that you did; Then there are the photos that are a bit non-descript, possibly blurred, but maybe capture a favourite toy that has since been lost, a bruised knee, a tear on a cheek or a child falling over...

On this particular note, I photographed a Christening last month and as the ceremony came to a close, the sister of the little boy that was being christened tripped at the alter and was in mid-flight as I snapped away. Whilst editing the pictures I couldn't decide whether to include this picture in the shortlist to show the client, but I decided that although it wasn't the crispest picture, it told a story that they may laugh at in later years, but if I didn't show them the photograph, they may not even recall that it had happened. Embarrassing though it may have been at the time,

So my learning has been that it's best to try and keep your selection of pictures to a minimum, but the ones worth keeping may also be the ones that tell a story or show a unique detail that you may look back on in a different light when you are 'old and grey' or greyer, if the case may be...