Overloaded with images on hard drives

I have been using Lightroom a while now, and have added folders a tad indiscriminately to one catalogue which is on an SSD drive of 250gb, so was running fast, but now the time has come to rationalize all the images I have made over the last 10 years, and there are a lot. One drive, "M" is loading at the moment and has 120,608 images on it, many buried and forgotten, some may be useful.

In the early days I ran with jpegs, and then jpegs + raw (I know, rather silly) using the jpegs for a quick upload of Event and Festival pictures and use the Raw file or better working. This inevitably did not happen, with working long hours and family time.

Now I have a lot of time-relative sets that are frankly not really worth keeping, and web duplicates too. I have rationalised by deleting losers on import now, not something I did previously, pre Lightroom.

So the plan is to load each drive as a separate catalogue, delete the dross, keyword the rest, and then merge a whole new tidy catalogue on USB 3 drives.

This was somewhat prompted by the search for suitable entries for an ARPS Distinction assessment, which I am going to next week, a tad nervous about the day, I must admit.
I chose 3 subjects, tried to get sets of candidates together and found much amiss, in my view. One contender was Barbican Architecture, which I can revisit to get more shots, obviously, Lodestar Festival, centred on the Site activity rather than Stage, and Musicians themselves. The last is very tricky as a lot of my events were very short on lighting and the print quality would not always be great, again my view. I am my worst critic, as I am sure we all are.

I selected masses of shots, sent them to DSCL for 9 x 6 prints, made a panel display system with A1 foamboard, and have been going through them. A mix of Architecture, Music and Festivals were in the mix, and I am still uncertain the way to go. I suspect a Panel on one subject is a better option, maybe Tate Britain, Tate Modern observations, Street Scenes over a set period or something similar.

Anyway I have a set of prints to mount and put forward, plus a backup plan for next week.

A little sad last week to step down from Cambridge Camera Club Freshers Group, with my last meeting being the Trophy Competition, with superb entries from all the folks. I was given 2 massive books, Brick and Concrete (they knew my love of Concrete), signed by Camera Club members too. I will treasure these, for sure.

Further news when my Panel has been looked at tomorrow in London, and probably pulled apart, but am prepared for that, though I do actually like my final 1.