What I'm up to (once more) is: please - show less photos, and choose those that you show wisely. I'm not saying that I don't have that problem. It usually starts like this: I come home from photo-walk-ing my dog, the memory card filled with something that I considered worth trying to make a photo of (yes, that's where the quality control starts already!), import them into Lightroom, and the memories are still fresh, the eagerness to explore the new photos, process them, share them with the world as fast as possible because these new photos are grand, majestic, the best ever made (so far;-) ...I think it sounds familiar to a lot of dedicated hobby photographers.
Just in case you didn't notice: I'm not talking about the documentary photography in which one preserves the memories of an event for friends and relatives. :-) But even there, a tighter selection with less photos would often make these albums more enjoyable. Whenever I get a Picasa Web Albums notification like "XYZ has added 127 photos to the Christmas album" I simply pass. I don't look at it. How can one evening result in over 100 successful photos? Imagine those people would shoot film - they'd all be starving while the owners of photo labs would all drive Rolls Royce cars.
Depending on the situation, light, equipment that I carry with me (sidenote: I recently re-discovered my monopod in the trunk of my car, ahem ahem - it's quite a nice supportive tool when I don't want to haul around the "big bag" with tripod and everything, but just the camera and one or two zooms) this might be something from two or three to hundreds of photos. I try to get the best exposure, so that's usually two or three shots, and with scenes with a lot of action and/or rapidly changing conditions (such as animals, or clouds moving along a mountainside) I might take a big sequence of photos of a single scene to be able to pick the best one at home (try to get 5 swans in a row and none has it's head under water).
When I look at other's online photo albums, I quickly become bored if I see two or more very similar pictures. So I try to pick "the one". The single best exposure, the best shot. And that's not easy, of course not!
"The tall ships" (FinePix S5Pro, 1/125s @ ISO 320; f/5.6, 300 mm DX)
I have eight photos of that very fleet of swans (and of course, there was always one which had it's head under water...). And something like 50 more with different angles, numbers of birds, etc. etc. - all are photos that are very much alike, and I like many of them. But how much would the impact of that lovely golden reflection (of bare trees and bushes) with the swans be reduced if I'd choose to show 3, 4, 5, maybe even 10 photos of that series?
And that's why I try to be my own quality control. I'm not successful all the time, but I try the best I can.
Happy New Year 2010!
2 comments: