For all practical purposes I am a minimalist.  I don’t function well amidst chaos or clutter.  That is not to say that I don’t have some clutter and a bit of chaos at my house.  I do…and it keeps me from maneuvering through my days in the most efficient way, something I really don’t like.

My basic belief about “stuff” is that if it doesn’t have an immediate use or provide joy or beauty in the present moment, then I don’t need it.  And, if I don’t have a permanent place for it, I don’t need it.  This makes me choose carefully those things with which I surround myself.

My minimalist attitudes affect my photography as well.  I am not talking to composition here, although I suspect that I could; but rather how many of my photos I keep and how many I delete.  Like most people who have a camera and/or a phone, I take a lot of photos; but perhaps unlike many, I don’t keep most of them.  If I keep every photo that I take, I know that I will become overwhelmed by the sheer numbers and thus will not be able to enjoy any of them.

On a trip, at a special event, or even with my daily photos, I will take as many shots as anyone else.  I try to process my photos as soon after taking them as I can.  I look for the images that best convey the story and emotions at the moment I took them.  If I wait too long to go through my shots, I may not select the ones that are most true or a genuine representation of whatever the occasion was.  I don’t want to consciously or subconsciously rewrite history; I want to preserve real life.

Also, I usually keep only a few shots of any one thing, unless of course there is a good reason to do otherwise.  This process causes me to go through each shot, look at it carefully, introspectively, and choose with intention those that I will keep.  What I have discovered over time is that I have a more intimate relationship with the photos I keep than I would had I uploaded everything to a hard drive.  I have a similar approach to “stuff.”  If a thing doesn’t serve a purpose in the present, or provide beauty or joy in the every day, I don’t keep it.  What this means at our house is that nothing gets “stored” in the attic or other outside facility.  Again, the decision about what finds a place in our home and what is donated is made with intention.  Thus far, I have had no regrets about anything I have let go.

I’m sure that I have deleted some “good” photos in technical terms, but the reality is, keeping everything is not practical for me.  Because I choose to live in the present, the likelihood of me ever going back and slogging through thousands or even hundreds of images sometime in the future is non-existent.  For good or for ill, I have learned to be content with what speaks to me when I take and then edit my shots.  This process also demands that I make a commitment to being fully in the moment even when I am behind the camera.  I don’t want my only memories from an event to be two-dimensional, only in my photos.  I need them to be vivid in my head and heart as well.

The good thing about taking as many photos as I do is that I can’t possibly remember every image that I take; so once removed by a few days, most of the time I don’t even remember what I have deleted.  Again, I have never regretted this practice, though I know a minimalist approach is not for everyone.

Are you a keeper or a deleter?  If you are a keeper, how often do you go back through all of your archived photos?  If you are a deleter, what is your criteria for which photos are kept ?