Probably a bit of a controversial topic, but don't be afraid to delete photos that don't make the grade.

This may well be down to my shooting style as anyone who has seen me shoot knows I am 'trigger happy.' But having worked with quite a few other professional photographers I don't think it is uncommon to come back from a wedding with shots approaching two thousand for a full days shoot.

The positive of having a large selection available is the knowledge that you never missed an opportunity and to me this makes it worth taking so many photographs. The negative is the amount editing and rating you have to do, as well as the use of harddisc space used.

Now there is a rule that I never delete an image in the camera. Instead my workflow involving Lightroom is to do an import and render each image. I then make sure a time machine backup is done before the decision to start deleting photos. I then start the rating process.

I try to do this in one pass and rate as follows:

Reject: Out of focus or blurred images that aren't artistic. I also reject images in a sequence. So if I have five images of the same portrait taken in a few seconds I select the best one or two but reject the rest.

1 star is a shot that will not see the light of day. Typicially I won't delete it because it's technically not bad but neither am I proud of it.
2 stars are shots that I am happy with and I use two stars as the medium benchmark of work that could make it in to the portfolio. But only as a reserve, for instance I may be missing a nice candid photo of 'cousin Sally' or simply to boost numbers.
3 stars are my best images and ones which stand out as having potential for further processing.

A break is now needed as I like to clear my head so that I can come back to the next stage with a fresh and open mind.

I then make a final pass of the 3 star images and rate them:
4 star for ones which I really like
5 star for outstanding photographs.

I then make sure I have around 300 images rated as three and above that are not duplicates. If for some reason I don't have many photographs rated three or above I am more than happy to select a few images rated as two stars but I make sure they deserve a place in the final gallery. For instance they need to be artistically beautiful or contain emotion.

I then have a quick scan of the rejects to make sure I didn't make a mistake (although I have a timemachine backup) and then delete them FOREVER!

I used to hesitate before deleting images I wouldn't use but they only take up valuable space and I know I won't ever use them.