How much do you throw away?

[h._p.]

I've just been going through my latest batch of pictures, tossing out

the rubbish, and I started to wonder how much other photographers

throw away. At the moment, I'm dumping between 25 and 32 shots per

roll which, given that these are all snapshots, means that I'm

keeping up to 30% of my shots. Just because I keep a shot doesn't

mean I think it's good, I might just want it for the memory of a nice

day.

 

How much do you keep or throw, and why?

[albert knapp md]

I shoot slides only. I usuall have 3 to 4 winners per roll and about

5-10 "almost there" shots. The rest are tossed. The "almost

there" are reviewed usually several months later or whenever

and 50% are then tossed. The result: 3-4 winners and 5 "almost

there" slides that are then catalogued and stored in different

books.

[al_kaplan1]

I cull and discard color frequently. For the most part it fades away anyhow. It's almost as disheartening to look at 40 year old color pictures and see what time has done to them as it is to see what time has done to the people in the photos. B&W holds up a lot better. I keep almost everything, but only as negatives and contact sheets. I can always go back and make a new print as needed. It's a mixture of personal pix and assignments and the file generates enough money each year to have made it worthwhile keeping. Some of the stuff that would have seemed most likely to get thrown out turned into the money makers over time.

[travis1]

Almost always need to shoot 4-5 continous shots to get one about right in the same scene. My negatives always consists of "batches of 4-5 frames" of similar scenes.

 

On a good day, about 4-5 I like on average off a roll.

 

I keep the rest in the folder, I don't throw them away...

[todd frederick]

I find that using small cameras with low cost film and processing lends itself to excessive snapping and not enough looking. I am very guilty of this. Just this past week I took numerous photos of flower blossoms in my garden, and, where I could have taken one snap, I took three! Wasteful!

 

My wife recently bought me a 4x5 field camera, at my request, for the sole purpose of slowing down, carefully looking and composing, and making 4x5 contacts.

 

In return I am getting her a C5050 digital camera for Mom's Day, however, I think digital lends itself to random snapping and deleting on an even larger scale than with film cameras.

 

We seem to be so rushed now days that we do very little by way of patient, deliberate crafting. The last time my friend, George Lauterstein, and I got together in March, I watched him use his C5050, on a tripod, and he often took ten minutes or more to compose and work a single frame. I admire that.

[george_l._doolittle]

On trip to Antarctica in Dec., I shot in excess of 900 slides from

which I distilled 68 for slide presentation. That said, I feel good

if I produce 3 or 4 really great images a year.

[sliu]

I learned "not to take bad shots" with my digital from years of practice. This saves me lot of money when I start to shoot slide with Todd's F1. I also realized that usually when I took two shots, the second one is not as good as the first one because of lack of confidence (Except for obvious exposure mistake).<div></div>

[marke_gilbert]

I dont throw nearly enough away. Last weekend, went through and culled literally one hundred slides or negs that I thought were ok in the past, now they just dont do it.

<P> If you are averaging 30% keepers, thats far better than I can muster.

<P>Best,

[gwilburn]

I shoot a lot of "surround" -- family activities, rooms, porches, decks, groceries on the counter, garbage bins at the end of our driveway on garbage day, etc etc. This is almost the opposite of art photography (though the results are sometimes surprising). I do all this as visual family history. I don't print much of it -- just file it away on contact sheets (or run off small JPGs these days for computer viewing). Interestingly, many of the shots I took 20-30 years ago are now in demand in the family as "new" prints. How people looked, how rooms looked back then, memories of former residences, changes in the packaging on loaves of bread. I do try to compose well and use whatever lighting is best, but at first glance few of these would be keepers. Over time, they take on new meaning and value.

 

Forgot to mention...most of this is B&W (usually Tri-X) and has held up very well, archivally. I'm still shooting mainly B&W (more HP5+ these days) but the same approach. They also serve who only stand and snap ... :)

[beatrice_flowers]

I shot over 6,000 frames on my West Bank trip. The result is 85 pics in the final edit. Okay, to be fair (to myself), there are about 200-250 keepers. In Russia, my homegrounds, I have a much higher hitrate, because I know so much better what I'm out to get on any given day. When traveling, you shoot so much more, because you 'never know'.

 

 

http://www.beeflowers.com

[ky2]

Todd is very right. I shoot different mediums, and the larger the film, the slower I shoot. However, this does not translate to better pictures, as I've grown aware that no matter what I shoot-- if I don't know the place before, I need around 24 hours or so to get "in grips" with my subject. Being so, most of my first day shots are often destined to be tossed away, while the "keepers"-rate substantially increases with time.

 

On the first day, I normally start out firing away with 35mm (or better yet, my DSLR), and I take my MF gear out only on the 2nd or 3rd days... is it lack of confidence? I don't know...

[Brad_]

I save everything. As hard drives are large enough and easy to

backup, why not?

[roland_schmid]

I shoot about 300 rolls a year (200 b/w and 100 slides). Of them I keep maybe 150 photographs, although I think that not more than about five are really good.

[roland_schmid]

By the way, the waste-paper basket is the most important of all the photographical tools.

[olliesteiner]

I have a very low percentage of shots that I would want others to see, but I save them all. Looking at the bad ones helps keep me reminded of what to avoid next time.

[graphicjoe]

I mostly use black and white film and I almost never discard a negative unless it is grossly defective. I have hundreds and hundreds of negatives filed away and when I go back and look at them I often find images that could, and often do, become good images. If I never took another picture I could keep producing good prints for a very long time. In fact, I can envision a day when I�m too gimpy to do much photography, but will still be able to produce marketable prints in the dark room or at the computer.

 

What didn�t look so good at one time can look better later. Also, I find that by scanning negatives I can produce images that would have been very difficult or impossible to print in the darkroom.

 

Cheers,

 

Joe Stephenson

[samir]

Do you think digital camera help new expirements and enhanced creativity?

 

With digital camera, you can preselect, on the spot, your pictures by destroying those you think are bad just by looking are the small screen. Is this a good idea? Personally, the ideal Leica digital back would be one without a previewing LCD screen. I find such a screen distracting. One advantage though, the previewing screen allows you to check exposure (through the histogram).

[geddert]

i am happy when i get one keeper every 5-6 rolls of film. I end up keeping more (maybe 5 shots a roll) because i invariably become the events photographer and my friends/family want pictures from the event, but as far as my personal artistic satisfaction goes, one from every 200 shots seems to be about my rate. I don't think that this is because i'm a "bad" photographer, i think its because i am by far my most harsh critic.

 

I have placed an order for a DSLR - i would have wanted an M-Digital, but i think that would be too long of a wait. I hope this will help reduce my costs.

[mark_salkowitz]

I shot about 100 rolls of BW 36 exp last summer. I only make contact sheets so, because they don�t take up too much space, I of course keep everything. I average about 1 keeper per roll (probably a little less) and have been told that is a rather high ratio. But sometimes I�ll go through 5 rolls of nothing and the next day turn out a roll with five strong images. I think a lot of it has to do with what you photograph and how you approach it. If, for example, you shoot landscapes that aren�t walking away from you in the opposite direction and use a tripod to set up the shot, I would imagine that the ratio of keepers to �throwaways� would be much higher, accordingly (not a �shot� at nature photogs!!). I�m trigger-happy. That is, I rather waist 10 rolls and get the shot, than be the least bit conservative and miss the photograph to hesitation. Even at my approximate mean ratio of 1:36, at the end of the year, I�m only very enthusiastic about a small handful being around 10 or so. The problem being that darkroom work consumes too much time printing small work-prints, so that you will always have piles of marked-up contact-sheets waiting to be printed. So if your like me and don�t have steady access to a darkroom, you�ll end up with some of your better work sitting in a binder with red-marker boxing in the prospects and hopefuls� <BR>

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