Do Not Delete: 4 Reasons to Keep Nearly All of Your Photo Files

Note: All of the photos in this article are from the Crested Butte, Colorado area. I recently processed or revisited these files because the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival invited me to teach two workshops in 2025: From Grand Landscapes to Smaller Scenes on July 13, 14, and 15, and Flowers, Plants, and Intimate Landscapes on July 16, 17, and 18. It is an honor to be asked to participate in this event as an instructor and I am very excited to be leading two small groups in photographing one of my favorite places in Colorado during prime summer wildflower season next year. You can download the full information packet about the workshops here and can register here. You can view my full collection of photos from summer around Crested Butte to get a sense of the scenery and potential photo subjects, as well. Now onto the topic of this article…

Summer wildflowers and an aspen forest merge on a tall hillside. Crested Butte, Colorado.

SAVE YOUR FILES FOR FUTURE YOU

Earlier this week, I saw a post on a nature photography forum about how a forum member had just returned from a trip and as part of his culling process was deleting everything he didn’t immediately like. My reaction was NOOOOOOOOO! DO NOT DELETE!

Unless a file has a clear technical issue (extreme under exposure or is out of focus in a bad way) or was a clear mistake (tripping the shutter while carrying my camera around and creating a series of blurry photos of my feet), I have learned to save nearly all of my photography files for future me. Below, I’ll share four examples of why I am glad to have gotten into this habit in my early days as a photographer.

#1: EARLY THREADS OF A FRESH OR NEW DIRECTION

Without knowing it at the time, your work might be heading in a new direction or you might be at the start of a fresh creative thread. While the work might not fully resonate with you as being a success right now, especially if you are experimenting outside of your current comfort zone, a future version of you might look back at older files and see that they now fit in perfectly with some of your current work.

The photos of the foxtail barley grasses above are an example of an emerging thread that I did not recognize at the time. These four photos are among my first experimentations with shallow depth of field, soft colors, and some abstraction when photographing plants. When I created them, these files did not fit into my portfolio at all and deleting them could have seemed like the logical choice. Now, looking back, it is clear that they were the beginning of a fresh direction for my photography and I am glad to have the photos for inclusion in my portfolio.  

#2: FUTURE COLLECTIONs

Sometimes, a single unprocessed file might not seem to stand on its own but will eventually fit in with a larger collection of finished photos. As I often discuss, I am drawn to sometimes mundane subjects, like looking for ripples on the surface of any body of water I come across. As single files, they often feel too plain to stand on their own. Over time though, repeatedly working with the same subject or idea across landscapes or with repeated visits to the same area, I have seen collections develop in which a group of plain photos feels stronger as a whole.

The individual photos are amplified when they are presented together, like the four photos shown above—they are definitely better together. The seeds of such collections are not always obvious as they are developing so it makes sense to keep files around to see how bodies of work will coalesce over time as I take more photos and work with new ideas.

A thick field of lupine wildflowers. Crested Butte, Colorado.

#3: PROJECT-BASED WORK

The photos in this article are all from the area around Crested Butte, Colorado. As mentioned above, the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival invited me to teach two workshops for them in 2025 so I took the opportunity to revisit all of my photos from the region as part of preparing the workshop materials. While working through files from years of visits to the area, I am glad that I saved some of my earlier work because it helped add diversity to my full collection of photos. While some of the photos I used for the workshop advertisement will not make it into my portfolio of “best” or “favorite” photos, they work well for this other important purpose.

As I work on new ebooks, video tutorials, articles, presentations, and a book project, I am so glad that I have saved all my files because I regularly find that something I initially considered to be iffy is actually perfect to illustrate an educational lesson. When working on photo collections, I also consistently find files that I initially passed over but now see as adding important visual diversity or helping in telling a more complete story of a place. As I have found, you never know where your photography will take you and future you might be really happy to have a deep collection of files for future projects.

 #4: EVOLVING SKILLS, TECHNOLOGY, AND VISION

Some of my first trips with a “real camera” were to the Crested Butte area and most of the photos from these visits are pretty bad—but a few were decent! I just did not know what to do with the raw materials at the time but as my processing skills developed, I could revisit the files and know what to do with them. I took three of the four photos above well before I started presenting my photos in black and white. The first photo of the grasses is very flat in color so it would have made sense to delete it during my initial editing sessions years ago. Instead, I am glad I kept the file around so I could re-consider it in black and white years later.

Another example: Some of my early manual focus stacks failed when using Photoshop but I saved the files anyway. Once I started using Helicon Focus, I was able to successfully stack the same files. Adobe Lightroom’s newer Denoise AI has also made it possible to successfully process very underexposed and noisy files, as well. Just like the previous three reasons, I am glad that I have these files around since deeper skills and better technology can sometimes make it possible to bring them to life.  

Additionally, the photo below is an example of reconsidering a file as my visual sensibilities evolve. My focus stacking skills were quite rudimentary at the time and it was windy, so I initially viewed the files from that day as a failure. With only a single workable file to use, I was disappointed that the foreground flowers are a bit fuzzy and soft. In revisiting it more recently, I did not care as much about that issue because with a less technically obsessive approach to photography now, the layers of flowers seemed like enough to make the composition work. This is another example of how future you might see the same files in a totally different way over time.

A medley of wildflowers in early summer. Crested Butte, Colorado.

ORGANIZATION IS ESSENTIAL

The key to making this approach work is being diligent about file organization. My Adobe Lightroom catalog currently has 251,039 files in it and as I think about current and future projects, I am so glad that I have saved all of these files for each of the reasons described above. However, with this many files, it would be easy to feel overwhelmed if the files were not organized in a consistent, systematic way.

Whenever I return from a trip, I immediately organize my files into the following folder structure: country > overall location (like national park or region) > specific location (like a specific beach or trail) > subject or theme. With this organization, my goal is to get my files into folders that are very clearly labeled, with each folder containing a maximum of 200 to 300 files (a manageable number for me as I start editing and processing). Paired with smart collections organized by year, file type, location, and some keywords, this system makes it very easy to quickly find any file I need.

My first photo of corn lilies, recently re-processed from the ground up for more natural color, less contrast, and lower saturation. Crested Butte, Colorado.

There are many ways to organize photo files so I am not suggesting that this is the correct or best way, but I can say that it works very well for me—and that is the important part. A big barrier to keeping so many files around is feeling overwhelmed by them. One way to deal with feeling overwhelmed is to have an effective organization system and use it consistently. If you can easily find photos among a digital sea of thousands of files, you will be far less likely to feel compelled to aggressively delete.

With these examples in mind, I hope you will consider saving more of your files for future you, especially if you find yourself regularly deleting technically sound files. There may be beautiful portfolios of great work that you just do not have the context to fully evaluate today. And even if most of those files are never processed, you will maintain an important record of your progress and evolution.