Why it is important to only keep the best shots after each photo session

I see several reasons to keep only the best images after each photo session and archive or delete all other shots. I mean, we should not keep more than probably 5% of the photos we are taking. And the ratio tends even to decrease the older the photo gets. Not so many photographers have the discipline to take all the time needed to go through every image and remove duplicates, poorly exposed and badly focused photos. But there are several key advantages to do so:

First, we are not “polluted” again by average or poor images when we search in our images catalogues or when we look back at our work, whatever the reason. Furthermore, it will of course reduce drastically the storage needed. One could argue it is now so cheap it is a pretty weak reason but as I wrote already, this is good practice for our planet.

As it is painful to clean the backlog, at least it would make sense to apply the principle to any new photo session and apply it occasionally when we browse some older archived photo sessions.

That’s a classical quality gate methodology which also makes sense for photography. As 80% to 95% of images tend to be useless and let’s be honest not so great, the impact will be significant. Believe me or not, it is so good to browse only images you really like. But again, this is both a question of discipline and technology as there are so far few software to help you focusing at the best images.