I’m not sure precisely when I crossed 100,000 photos, but I’m well past that mark now. In another few weeks, my Lightroom catalog will hit 200,000. Even these might be rookie numbers if you’re a sports or wildlife photographer, or if you’ve been doing wedding photography for a while.
Yet, from my mass of images, I’ve displayed less than 5% on Photography Life over the last ten years. Not even 0.1% made it into my portfolio – meaning that I’d be lucky to take one photo in a thousand that’s actually worth printing. (Plus, I usually photograph slow-paced landscapes; when I do wildlife photography, my keeper rate is much, much lower.)
I’ve always thought about photography as a bit of a numbers game, and those stats are why. If you get a winner every thousand photos or so, it seems like a good idea to take a few thousand photos!
But my opinion has changed some since I started shooting large format film for my personal photography. And don’t worry, this article isn’t really about film photography, but I mention it because it’s why I started approaching this question a little differently. In the few years since I started using large format film, I’ve only taken a couple hundred photos with it. This total even includes a number of early photos – not quite practice photos, but it hurts less to think of them that way – where I made some fundamental error like loading the sheet backwards or taking out the dark slide at the wrong time, ruining the shot.
Even so, at least thirty of these large format photographs have become part of my portfolio. That’s a rate of more than 10% – over 100 times better than what I get on digital. I’m not the type who sees film as superior to digital photography, even though I enjoy using it, so what’s with these results? Is photography not actually a numbers game?
Maybe you’re wondering if the question even matters in the first place. Who cares if photography is a numbers game so long as you get some good photos? But I think that it matters quite a bit.
If photography is essentially random (i.e. a numbers game) then you could predict that you’ll get one great photo for every X number of photos that you take (assuming the most basic of guidelines, like varying the subjects and lighting conditions). Conversely, if photography is mostly non-random, then the main way to get better photos would be by improving your skills, even if you took far fewer shots.
My time with large format film photography has shown me that it’s closer to the latter. If I’m being selective about when I trip the shutter – which is necessary given the cost of 4×5 film, let alone 8×10 and larger – just 20 sheets of film is sufficient for a week of landscape photography. Even so, I’ll end up capturing about as many total portfolio images as I would have gotten on digital.
This isn’t to say that it’s a bad approach to take a higher volume of images when you can. As you take more photos, you can pin down the optimal composition or give yourself more options in the culling stage. I’ve talked about this before in my article on the refining process, and more recently in my article on choosing between similar versions of a photo. In this sense, it’s perfectly fine to take a lot more photos if that’s the approach that gives you the best results. (And with some genres like wildlife photography, it may even be necessary.)
Yet, a lot of the work that goes into a good photo can be done without taking bad photos along the way. Maybe you do need to shoot at 30 FPS to capture a bird’s wings at the right spot, but ask yourself, is this particular bird the one you should be photographing? Is your camera position optimal to justify taking that many photos? Do the light and the background work well for the subject? Or will you just end up with a burst of a hundred photos that you never look at again?
If you take a moment to honestly evaluate the light, subject, and composition, you can “delete” a lot of photos by never taking them in the first place, and focus your attention on finding better subjects. This turns photography away from being random chance into something more deliberate and creative.
So, if you ask me whether photography is a numbers game – where taking good photos mainly depends upon how many you take – my answer is no. You might get lucky every once in a while, but more often, good photos are the result of putting care into your work rather than spraying and praying. Even in a genre like wildlife photography, I’d bet on a skilled professional who’s limited to ten photos in a day over a layman who’s allowed to take a thousand.
But there’s a caveat. Photography is still a numbers game in a very important way: how often you go out to take photos in the first place.
It doesn’t need to be anywhere special, although of course that can help. But no matter where you are, simply going out more often with your camera means that you’ll see more things to photograph, you’ll stumble upon more interesting moments, and you’ll exercise your creative and technical skills for when it really matters.
That’s why I say that photography is not a numbers game in terms of how many photos you take. But it is a numbers game in terms of how often you go take pictures. If you really want to improve, go out more often, no matter where you are. That’s all there is to it – even (perhaps especially) if you don’t take very many photos each time.
This thoughtful and well-written piece hit at just about the same time I came to an important realization: photography for me is a process that is not made more enjoyable by having tons more images to review and process in post. I was debating whether to jump into the Z8 world when it hit me that I’m actually much more interested in using my GFX 100S to its maximum potential, including expanding its reach with the new GF 500mm lens, than with spending the money to instead buy a Z8 and one of the very fine Z system longer lenses.
Of course the GFX combo is not the ideal wildlife and birding setup, but my process has always been more about timing and capturing the right moment with equipment that can bring out the maximum quality potential of the subject. And, I can still use my rather ancient, but very capable, D800 with the Nikkor 200-500 lens when i want something a little faster and with greater reach.
So I very much appreciate your musings on the deliberative process, even as it applies to wildlife and birds. I’ll leave the 20 fps bursts to others who enjoy that sort of thing and need to capture the most fleeting moments. My photo journey will most likely continue to be much slower than that.
Instead of pure numbers of photos, I like to think of “photographic events”. If there’s a single landscape, three shots to take it might be considered a single event, whereas fifty shots on burst of a flying raptor would also be a single photographic event. I define the “event” as the sum of actions required to obtain a specific shot that is already in the mind’s eye. A milky way shot that requires 600 shots is another example of an “event”.
In this parlance, the number of successful shots you get I feel is proportional to two things: the number and quality of photographic events, and the technical skill level you have to capture that event and translate what you see effectively into the medium you are using.
The quality of the event itself is nothing else than your ability to recognize something that stimulates the creative or photographic “eye”, which in turn can only be developed through practice and through self-discovery, which results in the likelihood that your senses will be heightened enough to permit scenes to resonate against your own photographic sense.
In each proportion of course, there is also a random component that can only be minimized by practice, quick thinking, and the training of the reflexes.
Well said! I agree with you wholeheartedly. Your comment hits the closest mark, I think, for a good policy for people to follow.
I agree, you put it very well! That’s what I mean when I talk about how often you go out to do photography in the first place. You’ll end up getting a lot more “events” that way, and better photos, even if you take fewer total photos.
I found that shooting film, back in the day, was too limiting. Since every time I clicked the shutter, it cost me money, I was very reluctant to experiment. I was hesitant to take shots I wasn’t 100% sure were going to work. I didn’t like taking “insurance shots”. The learning curve was too expensive. I ended up giving up photography.
For me, digital was *freeing*. I experiment freely, with the mindset that, if it doesn’t work, there’s always the delete key. I take multiple shots, from multiple angles, with different framing, knowing that sometimes when I get home, I see things I didn’t see in the field. I also can get instant feedback. The flip side is that I sometimes find myself taking “snapshots” like a damned tourist, without putting enough thought into them.
There’s gotta’ be a middle ground somewhere, but damfino where it is.😝
I wonder if the middle ground is to start with one medium (film or digital) and then switch to the other! Because I found film to be thrilling in the same way that you found digital to be thrilling. It was something new and unique in today’s world, and really forces me to use my eye for every photo or else lose money on bad shots.
I really enjoyed the article! I have a different opinion though.
There are quite a few photos that I thought about not taking that I ended up loving. I think not being sure about a shot can be a sign of not thinking in the box. Those sometimes are the most valuable photos (though of course, more of the times they are not)
For that reason I have concluded to always take a shot if something compelled me to do so. You never know how time will change your perception.
Good point, experimentation and taking photos when you’re unsure isn’t a bad idea in itself.
“I’ve always thought about photography as a bit of a numbers game”
Me too. E.g., if we look at each image for 5 seconds on average…
720 images per hour
5760 images per 8‑hour day
201 600 images per 35 days
It’s sobering when you put it like that!
Yes. My comment was inspired by two things.
1. By all the people who’ve said to me (over the years):
“You’re a photographer, I’ve brought my photos to show you…”
2. Your revelation that “In another few weeks, my Lightroom catalog will hit 200,000”.
No disrespect intended, but I guarantee that you are far beyond the point of ever being able to view all of your images; let alone have the time to manage them in a meaningful way (cull, edit, etc.), which would take much longer than 5 seconds per image. If that wasn’t daunting enough, you are adding images to your collection at a faster rate than you are deleting from your collection.
Note to the readers, as usual: the above is an observation, not a criticism.
I certainly add more than I delete, since I don’t delete any of my photos. Instead I select the good ones after a trip and leave the others alone. This has come in handy more than once, with my articles sometimes requiring the weaker images to illustrate a point.
I sincerely hope that you are smart enough to have already figured out the following…
If a catastrophic event occurred — that resulted in the destruction of your electronic images, electronic backups, negatives, transparencies, prints, and all other of your tangible works — you would NOT have lost anything of much importance!
Spencer Cox, Jason Polak, Nicholas Hess, Libor Vaicenbacher, and others, bring to the readers of Photography Life wonderful things that are orders of magnitude more valuable than physical possessions. These wonderful things are your intangible possessions; including skill, knowledge, and especially intellect and integrity. None of you are defined by what you have done in the past; you are defined by that which you can do now, and are able to do in the future.
I hope that makes sense.
That’s very kind of you to say, thank you, Pete! It does make sense and is something I think I needed to hear.
Just like to add, that there are many types photographs that requires one to take multiple frames to create one picture. Examples include pixel shift, focus stacking, panos, and astro-landscapes. In these cases large number count can be an indicator of a less random approach. Also, in the days of film we used to bracket our exposures because of the narrow latitude of slide film and limited post processing.
Those are all ways to make it more likely to get the shot and/or capture higher image quality! If someone avoids them, that would be a bad idea. I’m also in favor of shooting high-FPS bursts when necessary, like for wildlife photography. My point in this article is more about choosing your opportunities carefully in the first place, and going out to take photos as often as possible.
My LrC catalog sits at just over 68,000 images and will shrink as I continue my culling of older images and increase as I scan in older negatives and prints. On our current Colorado trip I have captured over 7000 images and already culled to under 1000 with more culling to come. Proboably a couple of hundred of those shots will end up in a photobook or posted online. The current technology allows me to capture many images and then just keep the good ones. That helps with fast moving subjects like hummingbirds and shaky old man hands like I have. Keep what you value and ruthlessly cull the rest!
Part of my large Lightroom catalog is because I don’t delete any photos. I learn a lot from my bad photos over the years and like going back to see what went wrong. Often I also post them on Photography Life as instructional material. Although I don’t photograph wildlife very often, I’m sure I’d delete some if I had a lot of high-FPS bursts!
Interesting, though I don’t see things exactly that way.
To my sense, different ways can be used to create different things. And also, I find there sometimes can be some kind of romanticism in the belief of “the one and good shot”.
And complacency can be anywhere indeed – not always a bad thing though, we need some rest sometimes ;) – and of course also in the thought of owning cameras able to shoot 120Fps (sometimes I feel that way… wow Z8, my god) :D… so.
Though, after some years, I’m inclined to think that you can have good material while feeding your card like hell or by just shooting twice and that photography process relies on a whole “system” where things from your own “attitude” to the physical tools and their limitations are invested as well…
So yes photography should not be just statistics, but statistics can still be considered as one of the photography “tools”, as valuable as any other as long as – and that’s where I agree with you – the attention you put in the process is here, and so, I think you can also put the same attention in the process of playing with numbers.
I have what I like sometimes that way and sometimes it’s the other way (also means I can end up with nothing, whatever the process :D).
And sometimes it’s just something else :D :
www.deviantart.com/pierr…-691415605
… stats says 50% of this handheld “on the fly” burst is used with 6 before for a “hurry preparation/framing” while seeing the bike coming, 6 after to ensure ending… but how about the probability of having ten consecutive shots with the face always between planks ;) I have no valuable explanation ! Still, and of course, you can also do this by extracting frames from a video, but I find it much less “romantic”.
That’s a nice sequence, I like it! I’m not anti-burst photography at all, especially when it helps get the shot like that. High FPS is just another tool at our disposal, not inherently bad or good. I do think it pays to consider how the burst will look *before* taking it so that the card space isn’t wasted, but bursts themselves are useful tools.
Thank you Spencer.
And that was my point indeed :D
Many years ago, on the path of my life, I met a former staff photo essay of a major print publication. He changed the direction of his work and began to print photographs. He told about the rules 36/6.
The idea is that out of 36 frames per reel of film, you need to get 6 frames that are suitable for printing on the cover or spread of a magazine.
Before that, while studying the history of photography, I read an interview with Adams who said that it was enough to take several dozen really successful pictures in a year.
In general, I agree with the author. If a person can shoot interesting and beautiful shots in a familiar and gray environment, then once in a picturesque place he will be able to take a lot of great photos.
Six of 36? That’s a nice and high ratio! It reminds me of when I talked to a National Geographic photographer when I was first starting in photography. I don’t know if this is the policy of National Geographic as a whole, or only of this guy’s editor/boss, but he told me that he had to hand off the whole memory card from his trip. No way to hide any incompetence behind a few good shots! And he wasn’t allowed to delete any photos either. I’m sure that he’d get an earful if there were any blurry or improperly exposed images on the card. That’s a philosophy I try to carry forward – no bad photos allowed! Of course I don’t succeed, but it’s a target to aim for, not something that’s actually possible.
Good old times, when you had to adjust to the Schwarzschild effect. very nice article. Velvia 50 (1990) remember 2/3 stop at 4 seconds, which was ok in those days. Kodachrome 25 was much worse 3 stops at 4 seconds. The advantage from film was for creating startrails, stars move to a point where exposure stopped until a new lightsource arrives , in that case the star was the new source which passes by. Great stuff for astro in the eighties Fuji R100 hig red sensitivity , RD 100 newer version was less suited for nebulae, we got Ektachrome 200 also nice and later the Kodak Elitechrome 100 worked great, just before the digital age arrived.
Yes indeed! And today Velvia has the worst reciprocity failure characteristics of any of my films. According to my notes, the meter suggested a 16 second exposure, so I gave it 35 seconds (a hair more than reciprocity corrections recommend, but I like to err on the long side, since the world gets darker during the exposure).
Kodak E100 and Fuji Provia 100F are beasts in low light, hardly any reciprocity corrections to worry about. But Velvia in the 10-60 second range is almost guaranteed to give some amazing colors.