Do you keep your negatives?

maring

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Let me preface this by saying I am not a pro photographer. I shoot mostly 35 and 6x6. I don't know all the technical terms for everything. But I do know that photography has been a very healing part of my life. With that, let me get on to what is on my mind.

This may have been brought up before, but want to throw out the question. Do you keep all your negatives?

Having thought about it some, I have come to the conclusion that it may be best to dispose of my negatives after having printed one or two prints from them. Seems that doing so will free me to be a bit more creative instead of looking back to what I have already completed.

I am not involved in photography for profit. I would go broke with all that I give away for free Yes, I have sold a couple prints, and been involved in a contest or two. But what really brings me pleasure in this whole process of negatives and prints, and doing it all with chemicals and in a darkroom is the satisfaction of seeing it through from beginning to end. So when I end, I think it is best to get rid of my negs. Then start fresh again.

There is always something more to photograph. Some new angle. Some new perspective. Different lighting and background. A new subject to explore. A different topic to tackle photographically. Some new method to try, experience and experiment with.

So for myself, I am reflecting and thinking over what to do with my negatives.

So, what about you? Do you keep all your negs?

David
 

catem

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Yes, I always keep my negatives.

My perspective often changes over time. When I look back, I am sometimes surprised at the preferences I had at the time. I love finding old negs that I completely overlooked in favour of others.

Also, I never have time to print all those that I might like to. So I like to feel I can revisit some time in the future.

For those reasons, I would be loath to get rid of any. I don't think it prevents me looking forward at all.

edit: wow - three people crept in ahead of me - you hit the bone!
 

DarkroomExperimente

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I have only destroyed negatives when:

(1) the photos were so bad I didn't want the evidence to survive
(2) the subject of the photo wanted me to
(3) it was a failed experiment
 

Cheryl Jacobs

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Darkroom Experimente, don't you think, though, that keeping those failed / bad negs can be a reference point down the road? When I've experimented and shot something that didn't work, I've found that writing down what didn't work and attaching it to the negs helps me compare results the next time.
 

Sirius Glass

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I also do not throw away my negatives ever.

I number each print with the year-roll number-frame number [2007-25-10] and keep the negatives in archival plastic pages in three ring binders. When someone asks me for a copy of a photograph, say of my now adult children when they were young, I look on the back of the photo and I can produce the negative in less than five minutes.

This is as opposed to my ex-mother-in-law who when receiving the freshly processed film back would, as her first step, throw away the negatives because "they take up too much space in the envelope". :confused: Then years later would cry because the photographs of her mother and father were lost or faded and she no longer had photos of them.

Steve
 

Vaughn

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I have a hard enough time tossing my bad prints...the negatives only if I totally screwed them up in exposing/processing (and I mean really screwed up).

Vaughn
 

DWThomas

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I have occasionally tossed an individual 4x5 neg that was obviously damaged or unprintable. My earliest work was with 35mm and I have some negatives I probably haven't looked at in nearly fifty years, but they're there. I suppose I might do some sorting if I had been shooting at a much higher rate, but they're not crowding me out of the house (yet). Selecting frames with roll films is tough as I normally have multiple frames in each strip (and I am not about to cut them apart and have individual frames fluttering around!)

DaveT
 

singram

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I am revisiting film again after a long absence. Right now next to my computer is my 3 ring binder which has black and white negatives from my very first photo class- my junior year in high school. Flipping through the negs, it was great to revisit the exposures I made while first starting in photography. Amongst the photos is a family photo with my dad and step mom. My dad passed away my junior year in college, so it was nice having that memory to look at. Please don't throw away your negatives.

steve
 

TheFlyingCamera

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I keep all but the negatives that end up badly scratched or have some kind of processing blemish on them. I still have my very oldest negatives from when I first started learning to develop and print my own. I haven't revisited many of them, but I keep them around in case I should ever want to. I think in the end it is not a bad idea, really, because you can find interesting things in that film from years ago that you never saw then, or maybe never knew how to bring out, that now you do.
 

Joe VanCleave

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I keep all my negatives - 110, 135, 120, 4x5, 8x10 and pinhole camera paper negatives, as long as there's 'something' on them, exposure-wise. The goof-ups teach a lesson (if nothing else, about proper exposure and technique), and I'm always thinking that 'someday', should I get real inspired, I'd use the 'bad' negatives as background layers for photo-collages in PS.

~Joe
 

ann

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never, recently i re-printed a negative that was made in the early 50's.

And, as someone else also mentioned, we change and what we think now and what we thought 40 years ago about an image may be totally different.

I believe you can move forward without fearing that the past will set a barrier for you.

Something that i have been thinking about recently is how my vision has been changing , it has been a slow process lately, but all of a sudden when reviewing old work it was very clear i am no longer responding to my world in the same fashion. If i hadn't the old negatives to view this slow change may or maynot have been as clear as it is today.
 

David A. Goldfarb

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I don't have room to store everything, and storing negs that I'm not interested in only makes it harder to get to the good ones. Editing is an important part of the process for me, and I think I learn more by editing now than by trying to sort through my missed shots years in the future. I edit negs and slides and toss the ones I'm sure I'll never want to reprint, usually for technical reasons, unless it is a photograph of a person that I don't have many images of, and might be willing to tolerate the technical problems just to have a picture of some sort. I have no shortage of negs to print. I do go back and reprint older material sometimes, but I'm glad I've made decisions along the way not to save everything.
 

rwyoung

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I'd have to agree with David on this one. Edit and make an effort to cull out those that are worthless (ie damaged beyond use), duplicates (same image, over and over but you have "better" ones) or test shots you are done with.

It was mentioned that you shouldn't even throw away the failures and test shots. But I keep a notebook and there I record (and in a few cases paste in a partial sleeve to hold the negative) the good and bad results of the experiment. That way I only need to keep the 1% of negatives that really count from an experiment. And I'll keep around the EI test roll or sheets unless I screwed it up so badly that it should be redone.
 

Sirius Glass

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Dave,

You probably shoot a lot more film than I do, so I see your point. I only shoot 2,000 to 3,000 frames of film a year.

Steve
 

Cheryl Jacobs

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I have found, though, that sometimes those "damaged beyond use" negatives are very useful later. I'm not actually how to define "damaged beyond use" to be honest; Gandolfi's "kill your darlings" negatives come to mind.

(I think the project is Gandolfi's, anyway -- feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.)
 

jovo

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I keep all my negatives. I sometimes use the obvious duds to practice retouching, intensification, or reduction. But, nonetheless, I keep even the ones I don't even want to look at again, perhaps because they remind me how far astray I've gone sometimes.
 

Ian Leake

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I expect I'll be wanting to make new negatives in the future rather than trawl back through thousands of rejects on the off chance that I find something interesting. And if one day I do look back at historical negs, I think I'd like to see my best work rather than loads of not-quite-my-best-work...
 

Konical

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Good Afternoon, David,

I'm definitely with the general consensus here. Except for damaged negatives and glaringly obvious mistakes (forgetting to close the shutter before removing the dark slide, accidentally having the sync cord unattached, forgetting to stop down before exposing, etc.), I keep and file all negatives.

Konical
 

SuzanneR

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Today's gems might be tomorrow's garbage. What was I thinking printing that one???

I keep all of mine. I rarely go back through them, but there are enough I've passed over... I may someday change my mind about someday. Or I might decide to print something differently.

And honestly, negatives are easier for me to store and file. Sometimes it's easier to reprint something than try to find a print somewhere in my pile 'p prints!
 

fschifano

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I have negatives that I made 40 years ago. I've recently reprinted some of them. What a kick!

Yes, I do destroy some negatives. There are some photos that just don't make the editing cut. Everything else is saved.
 

Shawn Dougherty

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I usually burn my garbage negs over a summer night campfire once a year. I find it to be quite cathartic. The 8x10 negs are fun to watch, they look a little like giant Shrinky Dinks as they go up.
 
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