How to clear items from Recents without the originals being deleted from folders?

Just seems a waste of space. I have to take daily pics of my PG&E meter since they rarely send a person to do so. So I have a lot of pics of this in my PG&E folder and it just seems a waste of memory to have them also in Recents folder and think that I should be able to clear them from recents, why use up memory when I have the originals in my PG&E folder? Also wasn't nice to discover that deleting them from recents deleted the originals in my PG&E folder since PG&E just "estimates" my usage if they don't send a person out to do it resulting in their estimate going above my baseline rates resulting in higher costs unless I catch it. Total nonsense on PG&E's part just due to my having solar, I've had to correct them many times and taking meter pics is all I have. I realize Apple thinks they're doing us a favor but should give us the option of deleting items we don't need without it deleting the originals. A warning would also be nice, I thought I was just clearing out space before realizing I was deleting the originals too.