Question for the photographers out there

[g_me]

I went away this weekend and took about 250 photos with my digital SLR. In going through them, I'm noticing about a 50% "keeper" rate; i.e. 50% of the photos are worth keeping once I weed out blurry pics and duplicates

Comments

[malinalda]

It's a little tricky for me to answer, because I either take photos with an actual film camera or with...my cell phone. In the latter case, the "keeper" rate tends to be much lower than 50%, because, you know, it's a cell phone, so mostly the pictures are blurry and crappy. In the former case, the "keeper" rate tends to be much higher (unless I'm really trying to get one particular shot just absolutely perfect, in which case I've been known to go through multiple rolls of film to get one picture I actually like). I think if I had a digital SLR, the "keeper" rate would be about 50% as well, because shooting digitally frees you up to take more shots of everything without having to worry about running out of film, so there's really no good reason not to photograph things twice to make sure you got it right, or to take a photo even though the conditions suck and it probably won't come out well.

[ethicsgradient]

Depends how you define keeper. I'd say that more than 50% of the shots I take are deleted outright, and many more aren't any good. I'd say my "I like this photo" rate is well under 10%.

[g_me]

good to know, thanks.

at the moment I'm defining "keeper" as "in focus and composed/exposed well enough that I'll put it in a FLICKR set"

[ethicsgradient]

Lately I've held my Flickr uploads to a higher standard....I've started following some photographers I like there and was sort of shamed by the high quality of their photostreams, so I'm trying to upload only stuff that I think might be liked by others....I don't always do so well :)

Maybe we should go out and do photography together sometime...I find that going with others makes me braver and actually get out and shoot.

Good luck!

[kimberkit]

My "keep" rate is never higher than 1 in 10, and in crappy-light conditions, without a tripod/monopod, it is probably closer to 1 in 20 (though I have not tested the fancy new vibration-reduction on this lens in bad light yet). I don't keep photos I don't love, because I figure in 10 years, I still won't like a meh photo, and hopefully by then I'll have gotten even better, photography-wise, so it's not worth hanging onto the only so-so photos.