Shot Discipline . . . and Catalog Discipline

[joel_b.1]

<p>Some three years into my enthusiast (non-professional) adventure with digital (I still do film, too), I woke up to realize that I had 10,000 images in Lightroom. That's fine, of course; storage is cheap. What isn't fine is that at least 25% of this archive is useless. By useless, I don't mean "nice but not spectacular." I mean <em>garbage</em>: out of focus, fatally mis-exposed, utterly boring, or -- this is the most common problem of all -- repetitive.</p>

<p>It appears that when I got my first DSLR in March 2009, I was so thrilled by how easy (and inexpensive!) it was to make exposures, I just made them like crazy. What's a burst rate for, if not for bursting! So going back through the earliest sections of my catalog now, I find many occasions where I made ten (or more!) nearly-identical images in a row, and after importing, dutifully saved every one. Moving toward the present in my catalog, I see myself learning to make fewer pictures, and to cull them more vigorously after import. It's so much more satisfying to look at these more recent collections, where my past self has done my future self the favor of paring away the weaker images and leaving only the strong. </p>

<p>What's your philosophy of shot discipline and editing discipline in the digital age?</p>

<p>I think a few years ago, I would have said, "Digital pictures are easy to make and easy to store, so take a ton and keep them all!" Today -- ironically -- I think my philosophy of taking digital pictures is actually a lot like my philosophy of taking film pictures: Take only as many frames as you need to, and keep only the frames that matter. </p>

<p>Random Wednesday thoughts . . . </p>

[lex_jenkins]

<blockquote>

<p>"...at least 25% of this archive is useless..."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Only 25%? You're doing better than I am.</p>

<p>To me, it's a non-issue. I'd rather shoot too much than risk missing a shot. Same philosophy I've had for years shooting 35mm b&w for candids, to cover events, etc.</p>

<p>And culling digital files is so much more efficient than culling my film photos, shooting extra digital files doesn't actually waste any more time. With film I have to peer through a loupe hunched over a light table. Then when I'm not sure about the negatives, I'll scan 'em to get a closer look before committing to optical enlargements. With a reasonably fast computer and image viewer (ie, even my old PIII machines with Irfanview) I can view hundreds of digital snaps in the time it might take me to carefully evaluate a single 36 exposure roll of Tri-X negatives.</p>

<p>By the way, <a href="../photo/11509850">here's an example</a> of why we shouldn't be too hasty to cull photos that seem, at first glance, too technically flawed to be worth salvaging. Granted, not everyone will agree on the aesthetic merits of that type of photo. But, to me, it's an example of what Bob Ross used to call a happy accident.</p>

[graham_line]

<p>You should only shoot enough to get the images you want. :- )</p>

[marc_rochkind]

With film, one benefited from a portion of shot discipline coming from external factors (expense

and effort needed to see the image). Now, it all has to come internally. I think for the best

photographers it came largely internally all along.

 

Change in degree, not in kind.

[dan_south]

Excellent! You have the luxury of discarding your mistakes after the fact when you no longer have to worry whether you

got the shot. If you only had a few shots available, you would have missed more opportunities, subtle changes in light

and expression, etc. You can't go back and reshoot the past. Capture it the best you can now and edit later.

 

It's great to strive for a 100 percent hit rate, but nobody does it. If you care about the shot, you won't skimp on the

frames or the bracketing.

[sravan]

<p>A bit of ramble, but i think i put my thoughts here.<br>

I think what the Op is talking about is also about the discipline of culling and deleting the bad ones.<br>

Initially, when i started my digital journey in 2006, i kept every single image. That was more because of a fear of what are good photos. I never was much into clicking for the sake of clicking. I was used to taking care of my shots from my Film days and kept that discipline.<br>

Now i am doing a little bit more of editing. Especially for my professional assignments when i do them.<br>

I am also diligent about deleting things which do not meet my own technical satisfaction - Blurred shots, out of focus shots, unless there was some emotional or artistic value to it that i see. If i do keep such shots i mark them as purple in LR to reflect my mood on them.<br>

I think for my personal stuff i am still a bit more lenient and keep a lot more. My wife wants to keep only the ones that have an emotional impact to her, but i keep a lot more. I shot a lot of flower photos. I know a lot of them are junk, but i cant get myself to delete them.<br>

Mind you they are technically good shots, but dont have an impact. Have nothing pulling you into the shot. Or i have to crop so hard that the image becomes 1mp/2mp picture good only for 4*6 prints.<br>

I think i am just going to be more careful while shooting so that i dont have hard decision to make during the editing process. Like you said do the photography as i was doing at the time of Film. My recent trip to italy i took 360 picture of rome and felt that 109 of them were good enough to put on a website to share with friends - met both my technical and picture criteria. I did delete 31 of the technically bad ones - rejected and deleted off my hard drive completely. So I think i am back to my good ratio as when i was doing film.<br>

Now to become even more frugal and take the time to compose properly and not just click!</p>

[rconey]

<p>Too many shots and not enough time. How many have lamented this, or something similar. I strive to cull vigorously, although like you I am more lenient with family shots. Never know what will be of interest later (like the marraige slide show :>) )<br>

For more serious work I think that only 10 % or so will be worth saving. Reference Galen Rowell. Be merciless. I go through every shoot and pick the best-sent to another folder. Later I go through that and pull the "best of best". Over the years it has become clear that I only need to look at the best of best folder. Over the years as my attachment wanes I flush all the extras. Usually.</p>

[Spearhead]

<blockquote>

<p>What's a burst rate for</p>

</blockquote>

<p><br /><br /> Sports, news. It's not all that useful for general shooting. I throttle the burst so that even if my finger gets stuck, it doesn't happen.</p>

[tholte]

<p>"I mean <em>garbage</em>: out of focus, fatally mis-exposed, utterly boring, or -- this is the most common problem of all -- repetitive." Why don't you just un-check them before import?</p>

[stp]

<p>I went through all my film transparencies that I had amassed over the years with intent of "getting real" with myself and my expectations for the photos. I'm also needing to prepare for being homeless (by choice). In the end, I discarded about 80% of the transparencies I had been keeping for many years. I'm doing the same for digital files, and that's the routine for new digital photos as well. I may take a lot of digital photos in some situations, but they get edited and culled pretty ruthlessly. In other situations, a burst isn't necessary, and I try to be discriminating before I ever press the shutter button. Family photos are nearly all kept, but if I come away with one to several landscape photos that I really like on a day's outing, that's a success and those are kept. Over the months, I might do some more culling. My criteria are what would I want to put on my website, what would I want to print and hang on a wall, or what would I want to print and give as a gift. There are some photos that I'm not sure if they meet these criteria, and those generally get saved as well. I think that by being strict and really thinking about what I keep, I tend to do better photography in subsequent outings.</p>

[pjmeade]

<p>I think a 75% hit rate is pretty impressive. My hard drive for 2011 contains ~100k raw files.<br>

Having lots of images is only a problem if you think it is. It's probably worth deleting the grossly out of focus images, but you never know when one of those repetitive images is going to be exactly what you want or need.<br>

I shoot until I get the images I want or need, so I'm not too worried about having to take more.<br /> I appreciate what you mean about repetitive though; I photograph a lot of cricket and even for a cricket lover, there's a lot of not much happening from a photographic standpoint.<br>

Recently, I've been trying to photograph some Great Crested Grebe behaviour and it's down to spray and pray, so I have a lot of very similar images, sitting there doing nothing. Memory is reasonably cheap, so I'm not too worried about keeping them.<br>

I'm trying to get a better capture of this head flick, which happens after the bird surfaces.<br>

<a title="Great Crested Grebe - Podiceps cristatus by Peter Meade, on Flickr" href=" src="http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6156/6177858270_3d28e674a8_z.jpg" alt="Great Crested Grebe - Podiceps cristatus" width="640" height="429" /></a></p>

[stp]

<p>Peter, if I had 10-20 photos obtained by several "spraying and praying" episodes (which is necessary to capture a very rapid action like this), I'd be editing to get down to the two or three very best photographs of that action, and I'd also keep those that might have a unique feature or element. But that means I'd be discarding some that by themselves might be pretty good photographs, but for which I have even better examples. Even after getting those 2-3 best shots, I'd keep shooting and experimenting with different shutter speeds, and I might develop several sets, each with 2-3 best examples, that are based on some key aspect (shutter speed, plumage at different times of the year, etc.). But that still results in a relatively small sample of my very best images, instead of 50+ images, all of which might be pretty good, especially when seen in isolation. That's the way that I'm approaching it.</p>

[walter_strong5]

<p>I'm having trouble understanding what the difficulty is in deleting images that don't meet your standards.</p>