Is it worth keeping negatives you have rejected?

[cliveh]

I have about 6 ring binders full of 35mm negatives, but perhaps less than 10% I consider worth printing. I am considering scrapping the other 90%. Would others agree? Or is there any reason to keep the trash?

 

[RobC]

you never know, you may decide in a few years that you want to print something from them.

 

[Peter Rockstroh01]

Once a year they should form part of what you discard. Fred Picker called it "The Christmas Edition." Considering what archival storage costs, it makes no sense saving negatives that will never graduate as prints on the wall.

 

[RobC]

depends what they are of. e.g. If they are documentary then they will have historical value. Maybe not much now, but in 100 years.

 

[Vaughn]

I don't toss mine. I'll re-sort them one of these days -- I'll need something to do when I get too old to carry a camera around.

Just under 40 years worth now...if I am lucky perhaps I'll have 60 years worth to sort through...

 

[gone]

Bin them. The old non printable ones multiply faster than Tribbles. Makes editing your stuff over time a real headache. Just be sure that you don't throw out any good ones, so if in doubt, save.

 

[RobC]

Bin them. The old non printable ones multiply faster than Tribbles. Makes editing your stuff over time a real headache. Just be sure that you don't throw out any good ones, so if in doubt, save.

This raises a good question. Why do we have so many failures, images that don't make the grade?

 

[removed account4]

i don' t get rid of any of my negatives ..
sometimes it takes 30 or 40 years to
see what you saw when you depressed the shutter ..

 

[Sirius Glass]

I do not discard them. I have found that a negative that was unprintable in the past is now printable with new techniques that I have learned. Even a bad photography may yield a usable print is worth printing with a different set of eyes.

Additionally I learn from my old photographs.

 

[pbromaghin]

i don' t get rid of any of my negatives ..
sometimes it takes 30 or 40 years to
see what you saw when you depressed the shutter ..

+1

 

[RobC]

I don't take many images when I'm out with the camera. I know how much time the darkroom will take up so I'm really picky about when I trip the shutter. This is brought home much more when you move into LF. It's much easier to get trigger happy with roll film. But for some strange reason what was perceived as being the making of a good print in the field just doesn't always turn out that way in the darkroom.

 

[Jim Jones]

A darkroom fire 30 years ago took care of the problem of many hundred rolls of film. Since then I've accumulated a few hundred more plus many sheets of film and (forgive me, folks) lots of digital files. They are roughly cataloged and occasionally prove worth keeping. It takes very few cubic feet of space.

 

[Vaughn]

This raises a good question. Why do we have so many failures, images that don't make the grade?

Hopefully it is because we are having fun, taking chances, and pushing the limits of what a camera, lens, and/or film can do in our hands. Sometimes the failures need to be looked at in order to see where to go next...or how far to back off.

Edited to add: I have been photographing along the same stretch of creek for 35 years -- nice little record...even if many of the negatives do not meet my artistic standards to be printed.

 

[4season]

I'm dealing with decades worth of old slides and negatives and expect to discard 90%. Am willing to save a "bad" image if it has some sort of emotional appeal, but lots is totally forgettable.

 

[Gerald C Koch]

Yes save them. I have revisited negatives and found images that I didn't see the first time. Photography is an evolutionary process. A person's tastes change over time.

 

[jeffreythree]

i don' t get rid of any of my negatives ..
sometimes it takes 30 or 40 years to
see what you saw when you depressed the shutter ..

Or take that long to figure out how to get it in print as envisioned, especially if there was a failure at some point like a poor decision on exposure or developing. I was going to clean house, but just reorganized instead after reading a couple of books from photographers that took a long time to get satisfactory prints from some subjects.

 

[DannL.]

Every year in mid-winter I do a big purge. I only started doing this some ten years ago. This year I might be able to get away without purging negatives at all. And that's only because I couldn't shoot as much I wanted. I really don't want to keel over and leave a bunch of crap behind for family. Though it seems that that is inevitable, no matter what I do.

 

[Vaughn]

And sometimes a whole proof sheet is worth more than any individual image on the sheet. They show how one approached an idea...or how one idea led to another.

 

[winger]

I have all (or at least most) of the negs I've shot since high school, even a few from grade school. Sure, many are not worth keeping when judged by impersonal or technical standards. But I was able to come up with photos of an old classmate who recently lost a battle with cancer for other classmates - they're VERY happy to have those. I've had photos of relatives that other relatives were happy to see again. I don't think they take up nearly as much space as the pile of shoes in the closet or the sweaters in the cedar chest or the tools my husband has in the garage (we won't even mention the space that 4 old cars take up). And I do look back at the old ones and have found other ways to print them. I like that they're part of MY history. Maybe they'll get tossed when I die, but I won't know about it, so… whatevah

 

[RobC]

Duffy ( London fashion and advertising photographer from 60's ) who died recently, burnt most of his negs and trannies in a moment of madness. I think he regretted it. They would be worth a lot of money now.

http://www.duffyphotographer.com/video/

watch the video

 

[MattKing]

It is fine to edit out obvious duplicates, misfires and the like.

But otherwise, I agree with Bethe. If only all the other stuff took as little space as properly stored and catalogued negatives!

 

[Sirius Glass]

And sometimes a whole proof sheet is worth more than any individual image on the sheet. They show how one approached an idea...or how one idea led to another.

+1

 

[Ko.Fe.]

I discard. But not 90%, because I like to keep films with family. Street photography and else if not printing I don't want to keep it.
Problem is at one roll I'll have four keepers, for example and they are all over the film. If I cut it by five frames i often ending with 4 x5 or so to keep.

 

[Lee Rust]

Like many of us here, I've got a lifetime of prints and negatives in binders and albums. Every decade they are more and more historically significant to some future person (not necessarily a member of my family). I think the most important thing to do is to physically label and date each image neatly, accurately and completely, in language that anybody can understand.

Nobody knows how JPG's and the like will stand the test of time, but it's a sure thing that most of our negatives and prints will survive 50 to 100+ years to tell the stories of our lives and times and how we saw them.

If the context and narrative does not get transported into the future along with the pictures, they will be much less interesting to the inhabitants of 2065 or 2115. Last week I was at an antique book fair and people were pawing through stacks of old photos from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Most of the pictures were unlabeled and sold for a few bucks, but the albums with carefully labeled captions and dates were priced in the hundreds. Remember the Maine? One album had several close-ups of the half-sunken wreck as it lay in Havana harbor just seven years after the sinking. The rest of the book was full of well composed photos of Cuban life in 1905, all captioned. Asking price? $300.

Take a look at the 'Shorpy' website and you'll find thousands of formerly mundane pictures that have been transformed into detailed time capsules by the passage of decades. By now, even family snapshots and school class pictures from the 1970's are starting to look exotic.

Fine art photographs are also more significant if they have a name date or story attached. The appeal of Ansel Adams' most famous image is enhanced by our knowledge that it was taken at Hernandez, New Mexico on an autumn evening in 1941 when Adams screeched to a halt by the side of the road and only had time for one shot before the light faded.

Recently, I discovered the half-frame 35mm format that's used in cameras like the Olympus Pens and the Mercury II, and was immediately attracted by the narrative possibilities of 72 or more frames lined up on a contact print. They're dense and chronological, like a tiny little storyboard. Surprisingly, the shots that might be 'rejected' in any normal editing process seem perfectly OK in this context, so I don't leave them out.

I scan the filmstrips, add detailed captions, then print the high-resolution composite image on two 8x10 pages and mount them back to back in a binder (accompanied by the sleeved filmstrip). The enlarged frames appear on the dual prints about the same size as full-frame 35mm and are easy to see (especially with reading glasses). It's lots of work, but the result is more like an illustrated diary than a photo album, and it's ready-made for some time traveler from the future.

 

[summicron1]

This raises a good question. Why do we have so many failures, images that don't make the grade?

because we all make mistakes, and only by making mistakes can we learn.

Plus what looks good through the viewfinder is not always what looks good in the final print, and might also not be what looks good in 20 years.

So I save it all. Someday my kids will have a real trove to look through.