Later

The name of the folder is LATER and on my computer it’s the digital equivalent of the closet in my house that I stuff things into until it’s so full that I’m actually afraid to open it.  Of course, I still do – just enough to stuff something else in and then slam it shut again. 

But back to LATER.  After every dive, I come home and, in a rush to get to whatever household catastrophe has taken place in my absence, I take a quick look at the images I shot, pull out the ones that are obviously good, delete the ones that obviously suck, and dump the rest you-know-where – into LATER.  My guess is that everyone who owns a camera does pretty much the same thing. 

Now, by definition, the majority of these images aren't very good and so I’m never in a hurry to get to them.  Years can pass without me opening this folder.  Literally.    

But as of this morning, LATER held close to 6,000 images and took up a whopping 175 GB of disk space. This is just one folder!  Clearly something had to be done and so today I went in.  The good thing is that most of the images are repetitive and can be deleted in huge chunks.  I figure if I work on them a little bit every day, I could be done in a couple of weeks.  By that time, of those 6,000 images, 100 or so might be good enough to keep.  And of those 100, two or three might be hidden gems.   It’s a poor rate of return but what are you going to do.           

Here are some of the ones that I held onto today.   None are great but they fill a gap in my files or remind me of something that happened during a particular dive.         

One final note.  I know two things for certain about LATER: first, as soon as I’m done clearing it out, I’ll swear never to let it build up again; and second, after my very next dive, I’ll immediately start doing just that.