Rescued from the archive cull
Traditionally speaking, I delete nothing. I have close to 200,000 saved emails (all read!). And I have every photo I’ve every taken.
Recently I decided I should delete unused photos en masse to free up room on my hard drives. I have been pretty good about rating keepers in Lightroom Classic as at least ★☆☆☆☆, so creating a smart collection to show me the rest was pretty straightforward.
Given my reluctance to offload anything digital on the off chance I may need it some day, I scrolled back through 30,000+ photos from the last year or so to make sure I was okay losing them forever. And of course, there were several that I had missed. I gave them a quick edit, exported, then tagged them ★☆☆☆☆ so they left the To Delete smart collection.
THIS IS WHY I DON’T DELETE ANYTHING.
Really, the lesson here is to take a little bit more time after importing. If I’m good about hitting that ‘1’ on the keyboard if there’s the slightest chance the photo might be usable, I can feel pretty confident about either deleting the rest right away—or at least giving that ongoing To Delete collection a quick look once in a while before clearing it out.
Here’s that set of rescued photos. (I’m not done reviewing yet, so there’s a good chance this post has a part two.)
