Taking lots of photos doesn't mean you're rubbish

Posted to a photography discussion forum...

There have been a lot of threads I've read here lately that suggest that if you take more than a couple of hundred shots in a day you must be just blindly taking pictures and hoping for the best aka "spray and pray". Lots of advice on slowing down. Lots of criticism of anyone that takes a lot of pictures, to the point of implying or outright saying a photographer doing this must be rubbish.

To be honest it's wearing thin, even when it's well intentioned. You don't get better at taking shots by reducing the amount of time you spend taking photos or just by taking less shots. Part of getting better at photography is getting experience and if you're shooting once a week you're not going to get that experience shooting 30 pictures in that whole week ESPECIALLY when your photos are not living up to your own standards. It takes time and effort to work out what does and doesn't work for you.

People are also confusing their inability to manage and organise a large number of photos with better photography. That's insanity. It's a definite positive thing that digital lets you shoot thousands of images a day and review it instantly. I bet some of the biggest names in photography would have done cartwheels if you could some how go back in time and hand them a current basic digital SLR with a nice fat memory card.

ONE method of taking better photos is to slow down and consider what you're doing more. This works for certain people and for certain shots that require setup. If you don't give yourself time to work out what you're trying to do and constantly jump from one shot to another, sure your shots will suffer. There may have been a better angle. You may mess up your settings shot to shot. You may not think of a better way. But if you review your settings between scenes and pay attention you can overcome that, gain experience more quickly than you could have in the film days and instantly re-shoot if you're not sure it's right.

There are a lot of times when shooting less is awful advice. One that comes to mind is nature photography (be it in the wild or at a zoo) when you never quite know what the animal is going to do (unless you've literally spent at least a few weeks with the animal and can reliably predict their behaviour - but even then they'll surprise you). Most people - even many pros - don't have the time to spend days with one animal to get that perfect shot. That doesn't mean all their phtoography is totally wasted.

Another time is with young children, particularly candids. You never know what they're going to do. Really young ones you can't pose, and you can't always recreate the shots you want with the older ones either.

Yet another is sports. Modern DSLRs shoot 4-8FPS and EVEN THAT IS NOT ENOUGH. Take a look at reviews of the Casio high speed cameras that shoot 30-60FPS at high res. It's the photographers using SLRs that do a fraction of that speed that are relying on "spray and pray" hoping that their millisecond timing happens to coincide with that bat striking the ball etc.

...and no you shouldn't be deleting photos as you go UNLESS you know it's completely ruined (totally under/over exposed) etc. The heat of the moment is rarely the right time to make that decision. To my mind, the best way is to take HOWEVER MANY photos you think the situation warrants - go nuts - experiment - do it thoughtfully and with purpose. Then take your shots home, create a best of folder for the shoot and move or copy the best shots there as you review them. Only delete a photo you know is complete trash otherwise archive it out of the way under folder that includes date and brief description as part of the name. If you get 30 out of 1500 photos, that's fine. No one cares about the other 1470 if you don't show them and should you ever decide you want a second look they're there!

Shooting heavily (as an amateur, not a pro) this way I think I'm creating 200-300 Gig a year, and that's shooting RAW, occassional video, and storing an automatic conversion to JPG of every photo. That's nothing. It'll take a couple of years to fill a 1TB drive. Use the techology for all it's worth.

Some common sense needs to apply too. If it's disruptive, shoot less. If you're feeling frazzled, shoot less. If your pictures are rubbish, stop and work out what you're doing wrong. "Chimping" is only bad if you're not doing it to work out how to improve your next shots.

Some people seem to think there's no value in taking a photo unless you know it's going to be perfect. How many better shots are those people missing following their own advice? Sure offer this technique as ONE way to try to improve, but it's crazy that this is the standard wisdom.