What is your % of really good photos?

I was going though my list of photos and was rather depressed by the lack of really good ones.  Some of it is me of course as pictures that I once thought were good I can now see are at best medeocure.  In some sense there is no such thing as a bad photograph but in reality there are very few really good photographs.  This is rather depressing.

I would say my keeper rate (defined as good enough to give, show or sell) is about 10% (pathetic I know).   but the % of really good photos is way less than 1%.  I would like to get that up to a solid 1% but not sure if that is possible even for the professionals.

I could probabably benefit from a better autofocus camera (mine is a 10D) but I really like my camera and it does take decent pictures when I use it correctly.

Anyhow just interest in your thoughts.

I guess it depends on what you mean by good photos. If you mean "technically correct" i.e. sharp focus, proper exposure and depth of field - my rate is about 70% or so....

that being said, i struggle with composition - my well composed rate is about 10%. I keep reading about composition and hope one day i can take more interesting captures. I am decent at still life, but struggle tremendously with landscapes and portraiture.... I am not a pro - a pro would probably say that none of my captures are "good".  I classify a good photo as I see it, not how others judge them

Example. Last weekend i went to the in-laws to take the classic "in front of the christmas tree" family photo. I took 112 captures. About 90 were technically correct.. However. We ended up keeping only 12, with 3 of them being excellent. Excellent meaning both technically correct AND well composed.

hope this helps

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"I may be a geek, but it pays for the car...!"

I find the ones I consider "keepers" are about 5% and the ones I consider really good way less than 1%.  I think some of that is natural.  I find that I take photos from different perspectives, different focal lengths, different exposures just continuing to experiment and see if there is an angle.  For example I had circled around Notre Dame several times before I saw this differnt angle of the cross, which I really like.  But dozens if not hundreds as I experimented.

Whosoever comes

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http://imagesbydale.smugmug.com/

I think you expect to much.

When I go on a photo trip where the only reason I'm there is take photos, if I can come away with one good shot a day, I'm a happy guy.

That's not to say that I don't get other shots that look good, I do. No I'm talking about the shots that I feel have a WOW factor. Those shots can be very hard to come by. With practice, and actually listening to others that are trying to help you, (that's the part I had trouble with) your shots can get better.

The best advice I can give, slow down.

I found myself rushing to get as many shots as I could, instead of trying to slow down to get that one really nice shot.

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Dave
My Gallery
http://davev.smugmug.com/

What do you consider a good photo ?

Why and what are you shooting ?

Unless a shot is really OOF , of my shoes / floor or the sky - I save them . Maybe 1 % of mine are trashed .

The last wedding I went to [ 3 weeks ago ] I took about 250 , trashed maybe 10 , and burned 4 DVD's with them all . People requested 2 more DVD's .

Now if you consider a good photo as one I printed to give away , there were only 3 - bride and groom , mother and father of bride and mother and father of groom with the bride and groom . They were cropped and printed on 8.5 X 11 photo paper .

Now if you consider a good photo as one I printed for me / wife there were 4 of them . the one I liked best was the mother of bride pointing with her finger and giving directions .

A good shot is an interesting shot that tells a story . Anyone can get a posed shot of the  bride and groom - but the bride smiling while looking at her ring - -

A keeper is more often than not a shot no one else took . To figure out what a keeper is , shoot 100 or so shot . Go to costco and have them printed [ 4 X 6's are 13 cents ] Have people / family look at the shots and pick out 10 of them . figure out why they like them .

Shoot raw for cropping reasons and control . JPG is for quick printing .

good luck- all the skill in the world will not help if you are in wrong place .

mine are all perfect, i would say about 120%.   YEA RIGHT. happy hols.

"very good" photos need to be very good.  Ansel Adams said 12 good photos in a year would be a very good lot.  And which variety is the question too.  Very good family photos and then very good fine art photos.  Probably will be more very good family photos than fine art in a year.

1% should be about right. Take 2000 photos in a year and 20 are very good,.

Appreciate your thoughtful responses.  Helps put things in proper perspective.

Hard to say, buddy. Most of the shots that aren't technically spoilt are interesting to me, but I know that what the majority are interested in is not the same, so I don't show them. In people shots that usually means if their face isn't showing, or their expression isn't very suitable. If you intend to build a portfolio you also don't want any pictures with anything detracting from the technical point of view and making you look like an amateur, so all this from my experience means maybe only 10% of shots cut it. If you get better equipment or whatever this could improve a little but mainly it's about being in the right place at the right time and making the light work for you. A truism but there you go.

I'm with Ansel on this.  If I get a dozen really good pictures a year, then that's a result for me.  I probably take around 12,000 a year (mostly wildlife which of course is largely unpredictable).  So it's way less than 1% that I'm really truely happy with.

Mike

Two things (always two things isn't it?)

Do you take a picture for it to be a good picture composition light and exposure wise or do you take a picture more as for a memory?

For the first I get 10% that I am happy with for now, for the latter basicly most are good enough.

At the moment "struggeling" with my new camera but I will win in the end

My PP-skills aren't that great at the moment (PSE10 I find terrible to work with and thinking swithing to LR4). This has an effect on my keeperrate.

Last but not least I am learning photography in general, so always room for improvement.

The more you know and the better gear you gets, tiny really minute things start to matter you never bothered with before.

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Cheers Mike

For me, I guess 1% wall-worthy albeit I am pleased with over 10% of all my intended "clicks."

For example: At a recent children's outdoor photoshoot....

EOS40D w. two different lens':

180 clicks (ea. bracketed +/- 1/2 stop) of 10 different "setups" = 540 RAW pics-files.

resulted in....

44 selected, processed, & proofs submitted to client.  ( 24% of clicks or 8% of every pic-file)

7 chosen/selected "for prints" by client. ( 4% of clicks, 1% of every pic-file, or 70% of setups  )

(4 retained by me as wall-worthy and/or for display portfolio.)

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johnimage

I took about 400 pictures on my 4 day trip to Venice  in last October.  I deleted about 100 in the first phase...

About 150 did not look bad.  Then there are a lot of bracketed images - several versions of some place i wanted to capture on a CF card.

I think there are about 30 that i can say are good.  And then about 12 that i really would print and some that i even could hang on my wall

Is that less than 1%  of the original photos ?

And if we talk really about something special , images that really make me happy and thankful  - it is perhaps 12 "significant" images / year.... And i am NOT too critical. IMO

I like this - but .... just one nice shot from Venice.

- part of a art exhibition

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Kari
SLR photography started in 1968, 40D since 2007, and now 7D !
60.21 N 24.86 E

I figure for slideshow level, 5-10% is about right.  Think of a wedding where you take 1000 pictures and would make an album with 50-100 in it.  Same goes for family stuff and hikes etc.

For my computer background or to print for the wall, I figure somewhere around 1:1000.

If you are getting higher than this, then either you are a rock-star, or you need to challenge yourself more.  Take more pictures where the odds of it working are long, but if it does it is spectacular.

Depends on if the question is you judging your own work or others judging it.

Some John Doe with p&s or cellphone might consider my pics great, the same pics posted here might get opposite critics.

What's your window for judgement?

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Cheers Mike

About .3% is very good for me so far. I use 5 fps bracketing as I have less experience this ups my keeper rate and returns some nice composition element surprises. A very good image for me has been all about composition because my main interest was to gather source art for painting and sculpture. And even then I did not reach 1%. But there is a person breathing behind the camera not just someone trying to be productive. I am also often just enjoying the experience and that is as it should be IMO. Most of reason I am looking to invest 2X as much in a new system is not that I think I will get any more very good shots, its just that the computational and capturing power of a good camera can make images I wanted for study of animal movement and posture also reveal fine details that are pleasurable to look at and so have value in that way too even if that is not what I was after. But with twice as good a camera I do not expect to ever get to 1%. My standards will always creep up along with my skill development. The challenge of photography is a large portion of the enjoyment.

It depends on you definition of "really good", of course.

I'm not completely rigorous about rating, and I have a lot of fire-away kids' sports shots, but LR right now has 25K photos, 1000 rated 3 stars or higher. I just created a photobook and only printed 40 that I considered worthy of publication.  I usually expect one or two outstanding shots out of any serious outing.

While I've never really thought about my % of really good photos (I'm sure it's in the single digits at best, though), if you are looking to improve whatever your %, let me suggest a very good book on photographic composition and design that I came across recently: The Photographer's Eye, by Michael Freeman. It's not light reading, but it does a very good job of breaking down and describing the various aspects of composition in an organized and clear fashion that helps provide a concrete underpinning to help one understand what makes an image good.

p.s. I am not the author's brother-in-law nor do I have a financial interest in the publisher

Going into Christmas day, which I will probably take 200 pics, this was very helpful to realize if I get 10 great ones then job well done

Never too old to learn.  Thanks for your book suggestion.  I have not read this one so jsut ordered it in the Kendel edition.