The rose is pretty. The photo is pretty. I don’t need 34 pretty photos of the same pretty rose.

I finished recovering posts for Burningbird and now it’s on to my second major task:

Cleaning out my photo collection.

As the title notes, the subject may be pretty, and the photo may be pretty, but I don’t really need 34 almost identical photos of the same rose.

I started out with over 100,000 photos from over the years. I’ve managed to cull out the absolute worst photos and now I’m at a little more than 47,000 photos. My goal is to delete 350 or more photos a day.

I hit a different album every day so I don’t get too overwhelmed by too many of the same type of photos. I set my mind to expect to see nothing but bad photos—making it mentally easy to delete. It’s only when I just can’t let a photo go that I know this one I’ll keep. If it doesn’t hurt to delete the photo…why keep it?

We all like photos for different reasons. For me, I have to feel something from it. If I’m not emotionally invested in the photo, it’s not a keeper. So, every fuzzy, motion-blurred photo from my one and only cross-country train trip I kept. Yet another pretty rose photo? Piffle.

I want that rose photo to say something to me. It doesn’t have to speak to others, but it has to speak to me.

Oh, I’m not silly stupid. I have a back up of the original 100,000…just in case. But I suspect I can really get my photos down to 5000 or less and not lose anything worth saving. It’s hard, though.

After all, it’s a pretty rose. And they’re pretty photos. And too many say, “Hi.”