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   Professional digital cameras have a button with a trash can symbol beside it. It's used to delete unwanted pictures.

   The difference between the electronic trash can and the real version is that you can’t reach in and change your mind.

   Each time I hit the delete key, I think of Luis MiGuel Castineda Navas. He’s a Leica photographer who lives in Spain. I’ll let him explain:

   When my great uncle died I helped to dismantle the house. It is a rather strange feeling having to dig into the intimacy of someone else…having to choose what to keep and what to trash of a whole life….I rescued from the boxes to be discarded a few bits--such as his pre-war driving license, the savings book and a couple of negatives and prints.

   As Luis describes it:

   This one of an encierro (bulls run) was made between about 1940's or very early 50's. No notes, no nothing apart the seal of the lab and the label of Agfa papers in the back. He always enjoyed the bulls, la fiesta, a truly aficionado, and during the bulls season he used to attend as many as he can. Also did it with photography, I knew that whole boxes were trashed the day before.

   The people wear clothes and shoes typical of the same time of the other pictures and there is a black guy which wasn't common in Spain at that time, so it could be made in the north of Morocco or maybe close of any of the seaports near Gibraltar--all the places where my great uncle he was moving around at the time.

  The picture is exquisite.

   And it serves as a reminder to pause for a second before hitting that delete key.

  Some trash truly is treasure.