Do you keep your negatives?

Ian Leake · Dec 20, 2007

SuzanneR said:
Today's gems might be tomorrow's garbage.

That's true. But I'd still prefer to look forward to what I'll make tomorrow rather than look backwards to what I made yesterday.

I suppose this reflects my general life outlook that the past is done and can't be changed, so there's no point in worrying about it (or worse living in it). Learn from the past then move on. I prefer to use today to make a better future than to worry about the past.

Having said all that, I haven't done any editing for a long time and I may still chicken out...

MattKing · Dec 20, 2007

maring said:
...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.
...
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

For me, negatives that are sorted and filed don't normally intrude on my consciousness nor do they affect my creativity. If I need them, I go look for them.

The un-sorted and un-filed negatives (as in tasks I need to get done)? They intrude!!

Matt

climbabout · Dec 20, 2007

throwing out negs

The only negs I've ever thrown out were the odd few that got ruined in processing.

To be fair though - I shoot mostly 8x10 in low volume and occasionally roll film, so even 30 years of negatives is not overwhelming for me to sort and store. I often wondered why I never threw any away, but recently I've become grateful that I didn't.
Some negs that I never enlarged before because of some defects are now salvageable with new dig**al technology and now that I'm mostly contact printing, I'm finding some old negs that made poor enlargements now make wonderful contacts. So I occasionaly revisit my old negs and discover some hidden gems there. The thing about photography is as your skills improve, you may find that you can print something today that you could'nt print years ago. Also my tastes and interests have changed and evolved over the years - so what I previously didn't like years ago I may have a new appreciation for it today.

Overall though I still spend the majority of my photography time making new images, but it's nice to discover an old hidden gem from time to time.
Tim

ITD · Dec 20, 2007

I have kept all my negatives, but that's mainly because I know that I am pretty terrible at identifying the good ones. Something that I overlook now might become useful later, and storage isn't a big deal with small amount I currently have.

Also, I have already been back to those 'impossible' negatives from a few years ago and printed them successfully now that I have a bit more experience.

Most of the old stuff still looks pretty terrible though.

Andy K · Dec 20, 2007

maring said:
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

Throw... away... negs..? My... head... hurts...

Seriously, keep them. Keep them all.

Michel Hardy-Vallée · Dec 20, 2007

The only moment at which I do some editing is at the moment of filing. If a test roll turns out to be nothing more than a test roll, I throw it away. If I can save using an extra PrintFile by combining two small rolls and trimming a shot or two, I do it. I throw away the obvious things: unexposed strips of film, slides with no image on it, or badly exposed tests from a bracketing series.

I have asked myself a related question last year right after the appartment my brother and his girlfriend (now wife) burned down to shreds. They lost everything except the clothes they had on themselves, and one or two items that survived the fire.

I came to the following conclusion: I would suffer in all sorts of way if I were to lose that much of my belongings, including the negatives. However, preserving my physical and mental integrity and my health would be more important in the long run than just preserving the traces of my work. And if I do so, then something else remains with me: the skill I have acquired over the years.

With skills, you can start over, pick any camera, and start taking pictures again. A collector mourns the loss of his cameras for a particular reason: their physical existence is the only reason why he had them. A user will mourn the loss of her cameras as well, but eventually she will move on.

So I'm more of the "my best work is the one to come" school with respects to negatives, I think. However, I have not engaged into the willful destruction of my old negatives for a number of reasons. The first is that I have very few (only two large binders). The second is that editing what is useless would actually take me forever, for marginal benefits. I shoot 35mm, so I work with filmstrips, not individual negatives. The third is that I am not done with these negatives: I am still thinking through them, and I occasionally reprint and old "loser".

On the one hand, I am not eternally attached to my negatives, and could live with their loss. On the other I see no need to clear my files, and so I enjoy all the side benefits of an archive: odd discoveries, memories, progress tracking, etc.

Once I made the mistake of throwing away an entire year of personal journal, when I was about 15. I thought it would actually help me to throw away all these memories, but I regretted it forever. Those writings were not works, they were myself. My negatives, on the other hand, are works.

removed account4 · Dec 20, 2007

i have negatives from when i was 5 or 6 still ...
and have only gotten rid of camera negatives 1 or 2 times
and i still regret it ...
i have assembled negatives, melted wax on glass and strange stuff like that
and those are like ephemera --- they leave soon after a print or two is made ...

winger · Dec 20, 2007

I have nearly every negative I've ever shot. They're all organized, so they don't take up too much space and I can find the one I want quickly.

I even have most of the prints I've made. Now those could definitely be edited, but I keep telling myself I can use the bad ones to practice toning, etc.. I still could pare down the pile some.

My SO calls me "packus ratticus maximus".

Christopher Walrath · Dec 20, 2007

My negatives are gems to be cherished and my wife can't even look at them any more. (She bent one.) Just kidding. Yeah, I keep about 90% of them. The crap goes in the bin.

catem · Dec 20, 2007

Ian Leake said:
That's true. But I'd still prefer to look forward to what I'll make tomorrow rather than look backwards to what I made yesterday.

I suppose this reflects my general life outlook that the past is done and can't be changed, so there's no point in worrying about it (or worse living in it). Learn from the past then move on. I prefer to use today to make a better future than to worry about the past.

I don't see the past, present and future in such absolute terms. Certainly not with regard to creativity.

ctscanner · Dec 20, 2007

This is an easy call. I would never recommend throwing away negatives, or slides if you shoot them. Stored properly, using good quality Archival material, they are good for years and year to come. So not only are they a resource that you can return to over and over, but, could also become a precious legacy to pass on to your descendants.
My two cents worth!
George

Mick Fagan · Dec 20, 2007

I too keep every negative, except for the odd blank one that somehow pops up every other year or so.

Like Cheryl, I have been thinking of doing a Gandolfi on some of my more interesting failures.

About the middle of this year, I was contacted, as a very long shot, by a woman who's wedding I had attended many years ago. Apparently their house had been destroyed by fire, along with their wedding photographs. Contacting their wedding photographer, they found out that the negatives had been destroyed/lost after 26 years of storage.

The photographer explained that he waited until 25 years were up for possible re-prints, as this was a significant milestone for his business and a good money earner. One year after that point has passed, he removes his files/negatives if there hasn't been any sales.

I was the only person who had any record, in fact, it took me about 3 minutes to find the negatives, once I had the date.

I have taken pictures of people over the last 30 or so years, occasionally I have returned to re-work the negative with a completely different version/interpretation. It is amazing how my viewpoint has changed! The change has been really slow and virtually unnoticeable to me, but it has been there.

Mick.

papagene · Dec 20, 2007

Too much of a pack-rat to throw away my negs!!!!!

gene

Akki14 · Dec 20, 2007

Mine are always there for me in binders. I'd never throw them out or get rid of them in any way. I started doing enlarged negatives(for alt processes)... I can enlarge my 35mm stuff onto sheet film, I can crop things to make them slightly better. Sometimes an "ugly" negative can be made beautiful. As I work on my darkroom printing skills, I might go back to difficult negative to rework it into a better print.
And I'm like Cheryl Jacobs, it hurts me when anyone says they throw away their negatives. There's just so much there, you can't just throw them out. I don't do much studio shooting or repeat shots so every image is precious. Honestly, storing a roll of negatives in a negative sheet file takes up less space than 1-2 prints of every image. And quite often if I show a print or scan of something, someone will want their own copy of it so what would I do then? I have a big family (of inlaws anyway) so I'd have to do 5+ prints of every image in case they all wanted their own print.

Eric Rose · Dec 20, 2007

If it's part of your "process" so to speak then keep doing it. For the most part I think most of us could do with a bit of neg house cleaning. It's not like we will be chucking out some sort of world legacy or anything. Well speaking for myself anyway. I have no delusions of grandeur.

But I have to say I have every negative I ever shot except for those that I did for newspapers while on staff and situations like that. It's not that I go back to my old negs often but every once in a while I do enjoy pulling out an old neg and printing it a totally different way. For me the neg is just like soup stock, it's all the stuff you do with it that makes it a meal. It's like a snippet of code, by itself it's pretty useless, but in the hands of a creative mind great things can be created.

Eric

Marc Akemann · Dec 20, 2007

Jennyluv07 · Dec 20, 2007

I keep my negatives...it can be fun to reflect on where you have been and how much you have improved. Also, I am still learning a lot and just purchased a bunch of used darkroom equip and when I get it set up I will use my old negatives to experiment. I have copies of how I like the photo to look so i will be able to play with filters and stuff to get used to the englarer

Chuck_P · Dec 20, 2007

Yes, absolutely, I'll let the decision to throw them away be someone else's.

IloveTLRs · Dec 20, 2007

I never throw any away negatives.

Curt · Dec 20, 2007

Should the CIA destroy all records of waterboarding and torture at GITMO? Like your negatives they are records of life in our times. Of course it's your decision what to save or what to toss.

I have saved all of my negatives, and if a distant relative finds them and a new technology is available after traditional photography is history then so much the better. They will see my beginning mistakes and follow the process to the end.

Curt

cao · Dec 20, 2007

Unless your skill and taste in printing will never change, I would hang onto the negative if I were you. I have a photo of a brindle greyhound which hangs in my dining room which I printed a few years ago. Lately, I've been playing with ferri/fixer bleach, and have considered places where the highlights in the coat could be made a bit punchier to good effect. As I have the negative, I can try this; had I tossed the negative, the print could never improve. Similarly, when I first shot TMAX-100, I didn't have too good control of my process, and I lacked an accurate thermometer; my negatives were very contrasty, and my printing skills weren't up to the challenge. Curiously, I got in a juried show earlier this year with a print from precisely one of those early contrasty negatives, but now I had the chops to interpret the tones and produce a convincing print as far as the juror was concerned. Again, where would I be had I discarded those negatives. That being said, I do shred substandard prints.

I've read that we are often the worst editors of our own work. Whether or not this is true, I question if the urge to discard negatives is ever a matter of sound deliberation rather than a heated decision made in erroneous haste.

Ian Leake · Dec 21, 2007

I'm certainly not advocating discarding all old negatives - that would be foolish. I suppose I have several categories of negs:

Ones that I print
Ones that I'd like to print if I could work out how to (e.g. too thin, over developed, uneven development, etcetera)
"B" negatives that I've developed as a reserve in case my "A" negative gets damaged
Negatives that I've developed, but I haven't got around to assessing or printing yet
Experiments that failed but which I'd like to revisit in the future
The rest - variations on a theme, tests, ideas that failed, ones that show things that I don't want to show, ones that I re-shot to make a better composition, etcetera

It's this last set of negs that I'm going to edit. I have no expectation that anyone other than myself is ever going to want to look at my negs, so why not slim down the numbers a bit so I can concentrate my attention on the important ones?

eddym · Dec 21, 2007

maring said:
So, what about you? Do you keep all your negs?

Yes. At least, I've kept the last 30 years of them. There are some from 1978 that I still print.

Lee Shively · Dec 21, 2007

I keep them. Except for those that remained at the newspaper where I once worked, I have all my negatives from the time I began developing my own film. I have found some overlooked treasures from 30 years ago in those negatives. Even the damaged or poorly developed negatives can sometimes be worth printing, depending on the subject.

jgcull · Dec 21, 2007

Yes, I keep. I enjoy going back to old ones and reprinting to see how I have changed. Sometimes they look no better, sometimes very different.

Do you keep your negatives?

Ian Leake

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