I take a lot of pics and some videos with my iphone. I love doing it. Its so cool to have a phone with me all the time. However, I've realized that I only care about maybe 5% of the pictures I take. I never go back and look at videos of my kids when they were toddlers, because I'd rather spend time with them at their current age. I don't look at prior football pics taken at Kyle Field, because there is always another game coming up. Pics from happy hours and parties... meh, I never look as good as I thought I did. Sunsets and great scenic shots never look as good on a 6 inch screen as you'd think, and I'm a decent photographer.

Am I the only one with phone full of pics I'll never look at? Or is the joy of taking the pics what's really important?

Before smartphones, I'd cover an entire vacation or holiday with one 24 exposure roll of film. It was more managable.


TLDR: I have too many iphone pics that I'll never look at, so I'm probably missing out on the few that are important to me, even after I do a lot of selecitve editing during and after. How do y'all handle that?

I comb through mine a couple times a year and end up just deleting many (price tags for something at Home Depot or the like so I can compare prices elsewhere)

I even delete some other pics, but I make sure I backup the important ones.

this has been a phenomenon for well over a decade at this point. I have dropbox auto backup pics.. so in dropbox, in Jan I'll throw all the previous years pics into a folder 20xx. Now 15 years of pics.. thousands and thousands of them. What the hell do we do with all these pics?
I have 30k pics since 2019. Some of them maybe 15 pics of about the same thing.


We've made picture books over the years for kids, trips, etc. That helps the kids with having specific images in their heads, kinda like my generation has of pictures of themselves as kids.

I'd like to get some software that can pull up similar pics, let me chose 1 or 2 to keep, then dump the rest. That would eliminate a ton of pics.

Even better if it can identify pics with no people in it or scenery. So receipts, pictures of a beer/food, screenshots, etc etc.. crap that can be erased.

Pretty presumptuous to think everyone has an iphone.

Leeman said:

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Pretty presumptuous to think everyone has an iphone.

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or an 'old' one for that matter.

Philo B 93 said:

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Do you look at your old iphone pics?

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I've owned every iphone and ipad model since the beginning. In the early days it was tough to photograph the old iphones because there was no way to do it without standing in front of a mirror to snap a picture of the device. with the advent of the ipad, i could take pictures of the iphone with the ipad and vice versa.

They all got stored neatly in my an external drive before icloud came around. then i migrated all the photos i took of old iphones and ipads. i eventually started posing my iphones like elf on a shelf and that sort of thing. I have a great number of old apple iphone and ipad pictures stored to this day, so yes i look at my old iphone pics.

That is because you leave pics in there and it gets lost.

Every few months, I remove pics onto my desktop and select the best ones and delete the rest. Then I catalog by year and month. More recently by decade also.

That way I can see what the kids were doing in June 2009. We do look at them, though not very often. They become valuable after 15 - 20 years.

I have some friends I met on the internet in 2001 around 911. We met up in person from 2002 onwards and every few year when the CA guy is in town. I have pictures over the past 22 years of our meets. It is fun to share every time we decide to meet.

62strat said:

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this has been a phenomenon for well over a decade at this point. I have dropbox auto backup pics.. so in dropbox, in Jan I'll throw all the previous years pics into a folder 20xx. Now 15 years of pics.. thousands and thousands of them. What the hell do we do with all these pics?
I have 30k pics since 2019. Some of them maybe 15 pics of about the same thing.


We've made picture books over the years for kids, trips, etc. That helps the kids with having specific images in their heads, kinda like my generation has of pictures of themselves as kids.

I'd like to get some software that can pull up similar pics, let me chose 1 or 2 to keep, then dump the rest. That would eliminate a ton of pics.

Even better if it can identify pics with no people in it or scenery. So receipts, pictures of a beer/food, screenshots, etc etc.. crap that can be erased.

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You have allowed it to become a junk yard. As good as having no pics.

Take the time to select and put them in a different "album" folder. Not more than 30 photos each month. You will enjoy them better.

I don't look at my old pics but I hack into strangers' iCloud accounts and collate their pics for them.

I go back and look at all the boob pics the women posters on Texags have sent me.

I'm pretty good at deleting temporary pics like price tags and other informational pics. We've started using photos instead of a note pad (or the Notes app) to jot down a quick piece of info. That makes the problem of an overwhelming photo album even larger.

This is a very big deal with kids. Their phones are full of screenshots of video games and pics of homework assignments, instructions, etc.


It would be nice to have a completely different app for informational pics. The pics could be low-res only and housed somewhere besides my main album(s). Screenshots would have an option of going to the main album, or the temporary info album.

I've never taken pics of my old iphones.

I cull my photos while I poop. Not every poop, but maybe 1 in every 20. Select the best of the 13 pics that you took of the same thing and delete the rest. Delete screen shots, price tags, stupid memes, pics inside my pocket because the stupid camera activated, and any that my kids took, cause they are always bad.

I use an app called SwipeWipe. Every day it shows me my camera roll "on this day" and I can swipe right to keep them or left to delete. Over the last year of doing it every day I've deleted over 3000 photos and videos. I've actually really enjoyed it because it makes it manageable to go through everything in chunks like that, takes maybe 3-5 minutes a day, and I see stuff that I totally forgot about. I've had an iPhone since the month before my daughter was born in 2013, so it's a lot of fun to go back and see videos especially of her when she was tiny.

aglaohfour said:

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I use an app called SwipeWipe. Every day it shows me my camera roll "on this day" and I can swipe right to keep them or left to delete. Over the last year of doing it every day I've deleted over 3000 photos and videos. I've actually really enjoyed it because it makes it manageable to go through everything in chunks like that, takes maybe 3-5 minutes a day, and I see stuff that I totally forgot about. I've had an iPhone since the month before my daughter was born in 2013, so it's a lot of fun to go back and see videos especially of her when she was tiny.

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that sounds awesome.. a huge part of the issue is imagining dealing with it all at once.. so doing a few minutes a day for a year.. sounds like it's done!

Problem is, I don't have all these photos on my phone, they are all in dropbox. So every 2-3 years I get a new phone, and start clean.

I wonder if anything like that can hookup to dropbox and do the same thing.

But you said it went back to 2013.. so where are all those photos? on the apple cloud?

Haha they're ALL on my phone, and in iCloud. Small business owner and pretty much every single thing I do for work is on my phone, so I've always gotten the max device storage available, which is 1TB now.

I'm not sure if the app could connect to Dropbox, but if it does, I highly recommend it!

Most pictures only become important to you after decades have gone by.

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Most pictures only become important to you after decades have gone by.

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I always thought I would reach an age where I would sit down and look joyfully back at all my old pictures of me as a kid, my kids as toddlers, my wife and I as newlyweds, etc. I'm mid-50s, and I'm not there yet. Not even close. When I look at those pics, even pics of people who died, it only makes me want to stop wasting time looking at the past and go make new memories now. And take more pictures, for some reason.

Philo B 93 said:

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Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Most pictures only become important to you after decades have gone by.

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I always thought I would reach an age where I would sit down and look joyfully back at all my old pictures of me as a kid, my kids as toddlers, my wife and I as newlyweds, etc. I'm mid-50s, and I'm not there yet. Not even close. When I look at those pics, even pics of people who died, it only makes me want to stop wasting time looking at the past and go make new memories now. And take more pictures, for some reason.

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wow.

I'd say a few times a year we look through old photos of our kids with our kids. They get a kick out of watching videos of them as 1, 2 or 3 year olds.. with the toddler talk and such.
We have so many of them that it's always something new to watch or see whenever we do it.

Even looking back just a few years at trips, which of course is ever evolving.

Sorry, but that has nothing to do with not making memories in the now or wasting time looking the past.

Philo B 93 said:

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Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Most pictures only become important to you after decades have gone by.

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I always thought I would reach an age where I would sit down and look joyfully back at all my old pictures of me as a kid, my kids as toddlers, my wife and I as newlyweds, etc. I'm mid-50s, and I'm not there yet. Not even close. When I look at those pics, even pics of people who died, it only makes me want to stop wasting time looking at the past and go make new memories now. And take more pictures, for some reason.

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Things change in a split second. You may think you are not close but then the switch just flips like that.

I like to scroll thru old selfies before I fall asleep at night.

Really irritates my wife when I take pics and import them into "her" laptop (where all the family pics are kept, and from there, a cloud), because when I take pics, I take many (just in case someone is blinking/etc). So, she's left with the task of sorting through them. I realize it's my fault, but I can't seem to change and sorting through pics isn't something high on my list (nor hers, honestly).

Reminds me about recording meetings. I like for meetings to be recorded, in case I want to go back and review or take better notes. But, IMO, 80% of meeting recordings are never viewed. Although, I'm watching a recording right now, lol.

In addition, I have a few photo frames in the house that are linked to our cloud photo repository. Sometimes, I get a laugh from an old pic, but often it makes me sad that that age/time is over and that we've all aged so much, to the extent that, for those pics, I almost wish I hadn't seen it.

Some in my fam are big into photo slideshows upon 60th/70th/80th birthday celebrations. Those have always seemed sad to me.

Jugstore Cowboy said:

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I like to scroll thru old selfies before I fall asleep at night.

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Are you a chick?

Only chicks scroll through their selfies scrutinizing for blemishes.

I've never owned an iPhone


True Story

Caesar4 said:

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Reminds me about recording meetings. I like for meetings to be recorded, in case I want to go back and review or take better notes. But, IMO, 80% of meeting recordings are never viewed. Although, I'm watching a recording right now, lol.

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My wife audio records many of her work meetings and that fills up her phone. Then she complains that it isn't working and I find that the memory is full. Then I get jihadi on her audio files and ruthlessly delete em all. She has never complained because I am sure she never listens to her audio files.

Caesar4 said:

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In addition, I have a few photo frames in the house that are linked to our cloud photo repository. Sometimes, I get a laugh from an old pic, but often it makes me sad that that age/time is over and that we've all aged so much, to the extent that, for those pics, I almost wish I hadn't seen it.

Some in my fam are big into photo slideshows upon 60th/70th/80th birthday celebrations. Those have always seemed sad to me.

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I agree. When I see my kids (one teen and one post teen all grown up I feel sad when I look at them being babies in pictures. And us looking younger.


Regrets? I have some regrets. So many things I would have done differently.

Philo B 93 said:

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Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Most pictures only become important to you after decades have gone by.

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I always thought I would reach an age where I would sit down and look joyfully back at all my old pictures of me as a kid, my kids as toddlers, my wife and I as newlyweds, etc. I'm mid-50s, and I'm not there yet. Not even close. When I look at those pics, even pics of people who died, it only makes me want to stop wasting time looking at the past and go make new memories now. And take more pictures, for some reason.

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+1, except for the mid 50's part.

62strat said:

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Philo B 93 said:

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Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Most pictures only become important to you after decades have gone by.

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I always thought I would reach an age where I would sit down and look joyfully back at all my old pictures of me as a kid, my kids as toddlers, my wife and I as newlyweds, etc. I'm mid-50s, and I'm not there yet. Not even close. When I look at those pics, even pics of people who died, it only makes me want to stop wasting time looking at the past and go make new memories now. And take more pictures, for some reason.

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wow.

I'd say a few times a year we look through old photos of our kids with our kids. They get a kick out of watching videos of them as 1, 2 or 3 year olds.. with the toddler talk and such.
We have so many of them that it's always something new to watch or see whenever we do it.

Even looking back just a few years at trips, which of course is ever evolving.

Sorry, but that has nothing to do with not making memories in the now or wasting time looking the past.

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Now that you mention it, I have done a lot of slide shows mirrored to the tv with family watching. But that's usually for a quick laugh for a few minutes before one of the kids takes over the mirroring to show funny Instagram reels. That's fun. I'm not big on being by myself and perusing photos from 10 years ago (or however long) when the kids were "cute" and me and my wife looked "young". Too bittersweet for me.

I never take pictures of any of my iPhones and therefore I don't have any old pictures of my iPhone to look at. Should I be taking pictures of my phone?

Philo B 93 said:

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62strat said:

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Philo B 93 said:

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Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Most pictures only become important to you after decades have gone by.

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I always thought I would reach an age where I would sit down and look joyfully back at all my old pictures of me as a kid, my kids as toddlers, my wife and I as newlyweds, etc. I'm mid-50s, and I'm not there yet. Not even close. When I look at those pics, even pics of people who died, it only makes me want to stop wasting time looking at the past and go make new memories now. And take more pictures, for some reason.

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wow.

I'd say a few times a year we look through old photos of our kids with our kids. They get a kick out of watching videos of them as 1, 2 or 3 year olds.. with the toddler talk and such.
We have so many of them that it's always something new to watch or see whenever we do it.

Even looking back just a few years at trips, which of course is ever evolving.

Sorry, but that has nothing to do with not making memories in the now or wasting time looking the past.

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I'm not big on being by myself and perusing photos from 10 years ago (or however long) when the kids were "cute" and me and my wife looked "young". Too bittersweet for me.

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I guess we're not there yet, we had kids at 34/35, so at 44, I don't think we look much different.

Go back to pics when we met (early 20s) then yeh you see it.

I'm sure in 10 years that will be different!