Spring clean

Anyone who knows me knows that I like to collect things and that I’m a dreadful hoarder – I’ll hang onto just about anything “just in case it’s useful”.  I’ve had to get better at this in other aspects of my life, simply because I’ve run out of storage space.  And now it’s encroaching on my photography.

I was recently talking to a friend about workflow and he was explaining to me that he deletes any images that aren’t his best.  It reminded me about a post I read a few weeks previously over on Scott Kelby’s blog by Terry White of Adobe.  In explaining his own workflow, Terry advocates deleting any unwanted shots as well.

I’m hitting the limits of my main PC – the data storage disk is straining at the seams, the processor’s capability it coming under increasing question each time I process a shot and despite upgrading the RAM to the maximum the motherboard (and OS) can take I have been getting more “Out of memory” errors recently, especially since I upgraded to version 4 of Photomatix.  The enormous RAW files generated by the 5DmkII are partly to blame, but objectively the PC’s just getting too old for my needs.  While I work out what I want from its replacement, I’ve decided to take these recent hints and have a spring clean of my RAW files.  Of course, I’m not planning to do anything quite as drastic as Flickr have just reportedly done to one unfortunate user 😳

Over the last two nights I’ve cleared over 10GB, and there’s still a loooong way to go.  I’ve already noticed a speed increase on the computer and that’s even before I’ve defragmented the disk.  I feel better about my poor aging computer and that perhaps I can string it out for just a little bit longer.  The other advantage is that I’ve rediscovered some unprocessed shots that I was meaning to work on. 

I probably should have done this a long time ago.