how many photos do you take

[kevinparis]

OK .. so this is NOT a competition

but working on the old Arnold Palmer quote of "the more I practice the luckier i get"

what is your keeper ratio?

this week i shot maybe 50 shots in an hour and posted 12 to flickr - which is where i put stuffI am happy/proud of...this was a surprisingly good ratio for me

E-P1/Nikkor 105/2.5 - a set on Flickr


couple of weekends ago I shot couple of hundred shots at the Paris Marathon - I kept 170 of those and posted 7 to flickr

Paris Marathon - a set on Flickr


as i said not a competition.. just curious

K

 

[BBW]

Kevin, I'd love to answer but I'm not really sure. I never take as many photos in one "shooting" as you that's for sure. Since I delete the masters and versions (Aperture speak) of the completely nonkeepers, it's difficult for me to really judge this. It also probably has to do with the fact that I haven't been taking "serious" photos for a long, long time.

I wish I could generalize, but I really can't. Sometimes I take 3 or 4 and 2 are great...sometimes I take 10 or 15 and I might get lucky with 1, 2, 3 or none...and yet other times I might come up with a big fat zero.

 

[cosinaphile]

same here , sometimes i delete them all and sometimes 80%is saved

but on avg id say i delete 90 %, but i play around alot too

 

[ajramirez]

Hard to tell, but I think that in comparison to a couple of years ago, I am taking fewer pictures per outing, but more often. I think my keeper ratio may be improving.

Antonio

 

[landshark]

Shooting for myself the percentage is about 10% processed and used. My play shoots average about 500 -700 frames
For work all are processed and used but f I did the final edit it would be about 1 to 2 %. For work I average about 5,000 to 7,000 per shoot

 

[Bokeh Diem]

I shoot around 120-150 a day and whittle the keepers down to around 20... it's all for work. I file Daily Reports to my client, a university in a building project. This is a very different task than shooting for enjoyment, although I try to keep it on some kind of esoteric plane as much as I can even though the reportage must be very factual.

Bokeh D

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[OzRay]

If I can get one great photo a year, I'm very happy.

Cheers

Ray

 

[Vic B]

When I shoot -- not every day -- I typically take about 100 shots and find about 20 are worth going further with. Maybe 1/3 of those will eventually end up in a Blurb book and/or on my blog.

Vic B
Photo blog: Here and There: A PhotoBlog
Blurb books: Search Results | Blurb
Flickr: Flickr: Vic B's Photostream

 

[LisaO]

If I spend about an hour I'll shoot about 100 images and pick 3-5 to work on, sometimes less.

 

[Herman]

Hi Kevin, I'm a good weather shooter. I go out for a photo walkshoot and take dozens of pictures. Most of them I don't like, they don't make it to mu-43 forum. Last Thursday morning I went out for "blind" shooting, camera was held in front of me, I just took pictures without seeing I was photographing.
I can post a few pictures if you like.

My "frustrations" are settings for film (which setting gives warm colorfull output?), I need higher ISO setting, weather resistant body and lenses.

Besides of that I need a new camera !:smile:
(still using my wife's G1)

 

[kevinparis]

Thanks everybody for the responses - sounds like we are all doing the right thing....taking lots of photos

K

 

[Brian Mosley]

As many as it takes to get one for my PAD... sometimes more than it takes sometimes, unfortunately less than I should

A friend told me when I started shooting with film, the important thing can be to know when not to take the shot... but with digital I'd say take as many as you wish, you can learn from the failures too!

Cheers

Brian

 

[squeegee]

I don't feel so bad now. I take hundreds of photos and find about 2% to keep.

I agree that sometimes taking bad pictures is helpfull in learning.

Sometimes I post / keep bad pictures, the true test is 1 year later, have I still kept them.

I was thinking similarily the gallery 100meg limit is actually good, when I hit 100megs, I will be forced to delete the worst of the set any pick the better ones.

 

[squeegee]

Oh as a side comment, I've been thinking for a whlie now. There might come a point in time where video cameras get so good that people no longer take photos, they just turn on the video then search through 30fps worth of stills for a picture they like...

 

[Streetshooter]

For my personal work, I'm happy with 10-12 a year.
For events, I'm usually around 70% because I don't shoot just to shoot.

If it's a Patriot Biker event I don't get enough. What I mean is....
I may make 200-500 images or more, depends on the event. If I edit to hard, there's always some guy or gal that want's to see their photo in the shoot.
Ya learn not to piss off to many bikers in a year. So, I shoot a lot and try to get a decent shot of whoever I can while still capturing the essence of the event.

My personal work is much different. I can go for hours and not make any images. Then something stirs and I get a frenzy.... I can take the camera out for daze and not make any images at all but then something happens and I feel it working....
My keeper rate is high until the years end...then I edit very carefully and look for the gems....
When I post a shoot like the Brighton Beach shoot. I try to leave as much in tact as I can, so that my thought process can be seen...... My friend Paul doesn't like when I do that. He thinks I should just post the gems but I like members to see what I'm thinking, then they can tell me cause I dunno...I'm just working...

 

[BBW]

You know, I woke up this morning and as I was heading down for my first cup of coffee...I actually thought about this thread of yours Kevin. I started to chuckle a bit at my answer. I think in the sense of photographs that I truly think are really "it", I'm much more with Ray

If I can get one great photo a year, I'm very happy.

That said, I enjoy snapshots for memories and more, too.

 

[photoSmart42]

The fewer photos I take, the more keepers I end up with. Something about slowing down and spending a bit of extra time on composition ends up working better for me. I used to take 500 photos in a session to keep perhaps 3 or 4 good ones. Now I shoot perhaps 30-40 photos in a session, and end up keeping 25-30 of them. It's one reason I went back to film for a bit - it forced me to think more about my photos because I had to make every shot count.

 

[kevinparis]

photosmart

you make a good point - there is probably a curve we all go through from being afraid to shoot to overshooting and then applying the experience we have gained

Digital allows us to follow this curve and hopefuly allows us all to discover our photographic voice

there are urban legends of film processing labs getting 36 exposure films that have christmas shots at the beginning and the end with some summer holiday shots in the middle



K

 

[deckitout]

I am not a spontanious shooter, I tend to plan my shoots, knowing what subjects I am going to tackle, I normally end up taking between 70/130 images and end up with 4/5 keepers that I will post up in forums and my smugmug site.

 

[Ray Sachs]

Good question and interesting replies. Back when I was serious, I shot as much B&W film as I could afford. Very small keeper rate. Out of all of the stuff I shot in college for "art" classes, I ended up with three images I really loved that stood up over the years. Unfortunately, I lost both negatives and badly mounted prints along the way and don't have evidence of any of them except in memory. My very favorite of the three is etched rather strongly in my brain and if I could draw, I could probably draw it exactly, down to the lucky bit of lens flare that actually worked in that one. In several documentary projects a few years later, I shot tons of tri-x again and ended up with more keepers, but the intent was different. I still have two of these on my wall (no negatives though - ARRRGGGHHH!) and there were another handful I wish I still had.

Then, kids and 20 years of reasonably well composed family snapshots and scenic vacation shots. Tons of keepers, but not interesting to anyone but us.

Since I got the E-PL1 about a month ago, I've been on a tear, trying to see if I still have a creative bone left in my body. And having a blast, by the way, which is ultimately the point. I'll go out "shooting" for a couple of hours and come back with 100-150 images, I'll narrow it down to maybe a dozen decent ones pretty quickly and over the course of a few days a few may grow on me and a few may expose their weaknesses, but I'll end up with maybe 3-5 keepers. And I mean keepers for now. In a year from now, I'll probably have 6-10 shots from this period of frenetic shooting that I'll like well enough to look at and maybe do a print. We're going to be traveling some this summer and it'll be interesting to see if I can get anything interesting or just a lot of nice shots documenting a fine trip. Dunno yet. Its a 25th anniversary trip, so photography is NOT the primary point!

Time will tell whether I'll maintain this level of interest and get back into this as a creative endeavor or whether I'll just take much nicer quality vacation and family shots now. Too soon to tell. But, as always, the higher the standards, the fewer the shots that make the cut and stay in my consciousness. Lots of good memories contained in lots and lots of photographs, hopefully for several people to continue to enjoy. But only a few will assert themselves through the ether as real long term keepers.

-Ray