Photo backup and management
Mac or PC? It makes a difference.

Recently on the PC my wife was having a similar problem. The phone will sync everything in the pictures folder. So I created a sub folder called iPhone and set the sync in iTunes to only sync with that folder and not the whole pictures folder. Now she just has to move the pics she wants on the phone to that folder.

On the Mac (going from memory here, so...) you can actually select which iPhoto albums you sync with the iPad. So instead of all photos/videos select only the albums you want/need on the iPad itself.

Make sense?