Shotgun photography - feels like a fraud?

So I took a lot of pictures in Europe this summer, and a few them turned out pretty nice, but I can't help thinking it was because I selected only about 150 from 1200. 8:1 isn't such a bad ratio, I suppose, but I'm not that picky either.

Photography is by nature a mixture of skill and serendipity, sure, but I imagine one should work towards increasing the role of the former and decreasing that of the latter, even if digital seems to encourage the shotgun approach. At least I'm strongly inclined to take multiple "safeties"--often just "because I can" a la Clinton.

So I'm just wondering if the experienced photographers / professionals have any opinion/tips on disciplining yourself to increase the keeper/non-keeper ratio. I imagine everyone has a different take, but it'd be nice to hear it anyway.

I'm not good, but I'm very experienced at not being good.

I once worked out my keeper rate (actually the "OK, that's not bad" rate) with slide film was on average 1 shot per 36 exp. roll. If I divide the number of digital shots I've taken with the number I display on galleries, I get (as near as dammed), 36. Odd huh? So although I am definitely taking 100 shots of one subject to get that perfect shot, in other areas I (or my camera) manage to make every shot count. Or my standards are incredibly low. Or something.

--
Geoff

'The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.' - George Bernard Shaw

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mediokre said:

So I'm just wondering if the experienced photographers /
professionals have any opinion/tips on disciplining yourself to
increase the keeper/non-keeper ratio. I imagine everyone has a
different take, but it'd be nice to hear it anyway.

Click to expand...

I find when I use a tripod I shoot more contemplatively and take more time to consider all aspects of the image before popping the shutter.

--
Henry Posner
B&H Photo-Video, Inc.

I've found I'm far more discriminating about tossing shots now, but I take more shots so you have to toss or the library builds too fast. I have to clean up a trip we took into 30 pics or so for presentation. We took 1000, I've tossed 300 at least from thumbnail/med sized review on the laptop. More to go yet.

--

UMAX AstraCam, Nikon 21OO, 54OO, 84OO, Canon A51O, Sony Ericsson P91Oi's O.3MP, Panasonic FZ2OK, Fujifilm F7OO

mediokre said:

So I'm just wondering if the experienced photographers /
professionals have any opinion/tips on disciplining yourself to
increase the keeper/non-keeper ratio. I imagine everyone has a
different take, but it'd be nice to hear it anyway.

Click to expand...

I've found I work more slowly and contemplatively when I use a tripod and also when I'm using a prime lens. The prime doesn't slow me down, but the fact that it works like my eyes ( want to zoom in? walk closer ) seems to have some effect on the way I approach my photography.

In any case, the end goal is to walk away with good photos. By any means necessary. It's nice if you don't need to own more CF cards than necessary, and cull through mountains of photos, but shooting 10 versus shooting 100 to get a good one, doesn't change how good that one is.

When I'm shooting a landscape, I might only take one exposure of an intended subject, after I've explored a lot of compositional options. When I'm doing child portraits, I take advantage of the burst mode, focus tracking, and the like. The more shots I take, the more I'll have to choose from, and the better are my chances for getting that one great photo to deliver to the parents.

The shotgun approach is another tool for your bag of tricks. There's nothing wrong with using it. There are a couple of downsides, but they're pretty minor ... I'd certainly rather buy an extra CF card, than shoot and experiment less.





http://www.landscapephoto.us/Galleries/All.html

Do you like taking pictures? Do you get pictures you like? Where's the problem?

Seriously. I took about 2K on a 7 day trip recently, of which maybe 200 were keepers. Granted there was lots of duplication from exposure bracketing and stuff, but I wanted to make sure I got good shots, sometimes under tricky conditions. I'm not that steady handed, sometimes I get camera shake, better to take 3 and hope one is a keeper.

Bottom line, for me and the above questions, I got pictures I liked, had a great time doing it, no problem
--



A small but growing collection of my photos can be seen at
http://www.pbase.com/poliscijustin

You may find your ratio of keepers never increases with experience, but that is not to say you don't improve, rather your standard of quality rises in proportion.

I remember many years ago reading in Amateur Photographer about Lord Snowdon being on assigment in the Far East. Even back in the days of film he shot 17,000 (the number is etched on my mind)! Apparently the 'keepers' numbered around 100!!! Of course, I will never know how many of the rejects would have surpassed my expectations but, as has been mentioned in this thread, if you enjoy shooting and get good shots, forget about any idea of cheating. The objective is to arrive at an image which gives you pleasure, however it is achieved and any technical shortcomings are irrelevant.
Keep on shooting and just accept it as your style. We aren't all Ansel Adams.

Although I'm just closing in on my first 2,000 images (since July), my ratio has remained reasonable constant - about 1 out of every 8.

Thats not to say that the others are awful or anything, but about 1 of 8 makes it to my "best of" file, if you know what I mean.

Another observation: one of the most brilliant and revolutionary aspects of digital photography is the fact that you can use the "shotgun approach" (to use the OP's term). You can take and view 360 shots, say, over the course of a weekend, without spending a nickel (whereas, in the film era, unless you were a darkroom do-it-yourself-er, the cost of processing/printing 10 rolls of 36 exposures (or 10 boxes of slides), well, you do the math...).

This is not to say that it isn't good discipline/practice to work on increasing one's "magic ratio" - that's one of the challenges of the craft, isn't it? - but I don't think anyone should feel bad about exploiting one of the best things about digital photography, namely, the low cost of taking as many pictures as you want! Bracket and burst away, I say!

Interesting thread, plenty of wise words spoken. Amateur Photography eh? I still have a box somewhere with every copy I ever bought in the late 80's and early 90's!

--
Geoff

'The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.' - George Bernard Shaw

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I'm just an amateur with not so much experience. I haven't figured out my exact keeper ratio, but it varies depending on the type of shooting. What makes a good shot is also dependant on the type of shooting.

If I'm out trying to find interesting subjects to shoot, I may end up with no pictures at all that I like (a bad day), or a maybe few shots of maybe 100. I usually take several pictures of the same subject and pick out the best one. That doesn't mean that the other pictures of the same subject are bad, they're just not as good as the others.

I've also taken some pictures at different kinds of events, like airshows, local competitions and so on. For airshows I try to pick out the ones that will be of most interest to the viewers. I may have 20 nice pictures of an F-16 doing a display, but browsing through 20 similar pictures may be boring for the viewer so I pick out the best ones or those that show the plane from a different angles. For other events, I will try to get a good overview of what was going on. I pick out the ones that give the best feeling of what it was like and at the same time try to show as much of the event as possible without having too many similar shots.

To sum it up, I feel that choosing what's a keeper and what's not is not just a matter of the photographic quality of one single picture, but also how interesting it is for the intended audience and how many similar shots there were.

(When I look at some of my pictures now I realize that I probably should've been strict though

--
Geir Bjerke, Norway ( http://www.darkside.no/ )

i have an old friend who as a phenomenal ability to anticipate and wait for the shot. He tells me that its because when he started in his first job in the 60,s he would be given one roll of film and told to get some usable shots. The other side of it is, in a conversation last year he told me he must have 15 or 16 realy good photos, thats one every 3 years.

The only thing that gets me into been diciplined is having to produce the goods for the customer in the time and circumstances available. Producing to somebody elses requirments takes some of the wooliness out of it, but you can stlill have very happy customers and nothing you would call a great shot.

20 to 36 yrs ago my wife and i took car trips out west lasting 2-3 weeks. i routinely shot 600 to 1000 slides, not cheap. my motto was blitz now edit later, because no matter what cost of the slides and developing, it was far cheaper than to take the trip again to get the shots that didn't come out or i didn't take at all.

now, with far more experience and 36 yrs slide and digital picture taking behind me; i shoot far less with a 1or 2% bad shot rate maximum. of 200 pics i will sort and delete about 1/2. not because they didn't come out but because of choices in composition(like or dislikes). of the 100 keepers maybe 5 will get post-processing(of some kind. they are all jpegs(max quality) by the way.

Clinton? Do you have a link to his gallerey?
--
Laurie Strachan

Sorry. That was a reference to former U.S. president Bill Clinton's excuse for his epoch-defining clinical insertion of a cigar into one of his semi-photogenic (most say not at all) intern Monica Lewinsky's bodily orifices:

Q: "So, Bill, why did you do it?"
B: "Eh, well... I don't know."
Q: "Tell us why!"
B: "Um, uh... Um."
Q: "Why?"

B: "Okay, guys, I'll tell you why. I did it for the worst of reasons--I did it because I could."

I am not American, though I've been living here in the past 6 years. So it was an ironic mistake that I assumed my audience to understand my reference. I am sorry. Bill Clinton is no photographer.

Laurie Strachan said:

Clinton? Do you have a link to his gallerey?
--
Laurie Strachan

Click to expand...

20 years ago, I used to shoot film, mostly wasting the film. Then I got married. I tried to keep shooting, but the cost was often more than the budget could bear (we were not well off). So I stopped, only getting the camera out for special occasions. Then I got divorced, discovered digital and started shooting again. I still shoot much like I did with film, making sure that I really want the shot and that it really is as good as I think it is (sometimes I surprise myself). I'm now tending to experiment more with exposure and composition etc (coz it's free), but I still try to think like a film 'tog. I find it increases my ratio of keepers - I'm now up to about 1 in 120, so that can't be a bad thing. (c:

--
Rob

If you're bored...
http://braveulysses.deviantart.com/

The key to good photography is looking at your pics and others pics (good, bad or so so) and deciding you want to have better pics than THAT.

And then doing something about it!

Having shot with colour slides and negatives since 1961 may have affected my keeper rate - it's probably 90 percent or higher. Perhaps when each shot used one frame, and had to be developed and printed, one spent more time reflecting on all aspects of what would make a good shot. Film and development became a major cost. To people like Lord Snowden, the cost wouldn't have been a factor as it would have been to a pauper like me.

On the other hand, maybe I'm just not fussy, or deep down hate to throw anything away (raised by parents that went through the depression - frugality is second nature).

I keep telling myself, "two more shots aren't going to cost any more", but the old habits die hard. We learned how to squeeze two more frames from a roll of film - the cost of film and processing was fixed - two more shots on a 20 roll was a 10 percent increase!

After reading the posts about using a tripod, I see where it makes sense - one likely tends to think more about it because there is a time factor in setting up and composing. Good advice - I'm going to try it.
--
Glenn NK
Victoria, BC

The more you take, the better your get. The better you get, the more picky you become. The more picky you are, the more you reject.

Seriously, it's been widely reported that bad, good, and great photographers have about the same good to bad ratio - but the great photogrraphe'rs worst pictures are probably better than a bad photographer's best pictures.

Don't worry about it. After 35 years of photography it's as hard as ever to predict when a picture when leap out and grab me - but my pictures are getting better.

So, are your best pictures getting better : ) ??