It's HURTING Your Photography. (Stop Doing It And Improve As A Photographer)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ส.ค. 2024
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Hi All. Excuse the slightly wonky sound - I just moved house and this was a temp set-up which was just, in retrospect, a tad echotastic!
Thanks again for watching.
What do you think of the new place I have to film in?
Sounded fine to me 🤷♂️
missing the orange light in the back......
Don’t like the highlights. Better before.
And after the above comment it got better. But avoid the window in the future. IMHO.
i liked the old scene more, but i also think that a new home deserves a new space.
It’s a little bright by the window maybe but it’s a lovely setting. (But will the orange cat make an appearance again?)
All of this is such great advice, especially in the day of "30 fps and they should all be tack-sharp...". Honestly some of my favorite photos are ones that - right before I pressed the shutter - I considered not capturing. I never delete in-camera, and I avoid reviewing images while I'm shooting (unless I'm balancing strobe / ambient light).
What I love about your lectures is that you discuss the photos themselves. It’s a breath of fresh air and non intimidating to love my photos and the work I do. Thank you.
BTW ..this is a compliment ..every time I watch your presentation it's like getting a clip round the ear...and opens up another doorway to the cellar level of creativity ..that we once closed
All so true! Thanks for the reminder! And congrats on the new home ... hope you and the family have settled in ... moving is such a stressful thing to go through, no matter how well-prepared you are for it!
Love the new setting but loved the old one too. I have been keeping a few “mistakes” and wholeheartedly agree, there is something about them. I rejoice in their badness. You are right, new ideas can come from them. 👍👍👍👍👍
Thank you for the wisdom and encouragement in this channel!
At last good advice. Love your talks and they help me to make sense of my photography. Thank you
Amazing channel Alex…something I was searching for since long!! Keep creating 👏🏻🙏🏻
Wonderful words, and one I always do, keep my old photos, and look back over some time, thank you, great to see you back.
Well said Alex, some of my best shots were born out of previous mistakes.
I have learned exponentially so much more from my 'mistakes' than I have from the shots that turned out as planned/expected. Could not imagine throwing this 'pure gold' away!
I'm so glad photography isn't about perfection. Each video you produce encourages me to enjoy it. Which I do!!
I’ve seen about 5 videos from your channel in past 2 days. I strongly enjoy it. Every video helps me think about my photogr differently. Great channel keep it up
Great advice on keeping images.
Thanks for your insight.
I love this channel. It's the only photography channel that cares about taking pictures rather than what you take the pictures with.
Always enjoy your talks, I got so wrapped up in the gear, I stopped thinking about the process. I have recently picked up a simpler smaller camera system, and find my self enjoying photography much more.
I've heard the advice before but not the reasoning. Thank for- as usual - making me reconsider aspects of photography previously set in mental concrete.
New digs look splendid.
Good to have you back too!
It's funny but my problem is I can't throw any photo away. I'm kind of a "photographic hoarder", so much so that my family kids me about it. I revisit all my photos over time to find things I missed the first 20 times I revisited them. Great, timely video.
I thought I was anomalous for doing the exact same thing.
Well I delete not nessisary bad ones but ones that are completely black or over exposed I can't see anything. Otherwise I keep them. Even out of focus.
Excellent as all! your tutorials 🙏🙏🙏
Loved this video as always. I feel that the better i have gotten the more selective my culling has gotten, but also the more photos i will shoot. Digital cards really are a luxury
Yep, yep and yep. The only images I delete are floors and ceilings.
In my experience, it's amazing what you can discover in your work a few days or a week later.
Thanks for another thoughtful video, Alex.
Hi Alex! Thank you for the amazing content and insight!
I was in a community college class once presented by a couple of wedding photographers. They were advising the class to cull their photos, throw out the bad and move on. One old guy in the back became highly offended and said "You're telling them to throw away their precious, precious photographs!!" He had a brief argument with the instructor then left and never came back.
I’m ruthless with my images. However some of my best images are the happy accidents and the ones that didn’t come out as planned. I need to save more :-)
I get both sides.
The wedding is partly "commercial" / productive. The value of only selecting the best photo's is immense.
It is also partly artistic and personal. Allowing the photographer to grow and discover.
The key might be in the video: consideration when photographing.
Not having 15.000 photo's of a wedding might help in spending time with the 2.000 that you do take.
Consideration might also givr you the opportunity to actually try different photo's instead of ending up with 20 pics of the same instant, with the same settings, from the same viewpoint.
Sometimes online, I see a whole bunch of the same photograph, just edited differently / different preset / different filter applied. This dilutes and makes the impact less. You are the photographer, you make the choice.
I’m surprised it took square space this long to get on your bandwagon. Every single video you put out is worth watching and liking.
I love the location in this video, has a certain 'Orangery' feel about it. Light, airy, and open. Content is King, and I wholeheartedly agree about contact sheets, and not tossing out photos. I have made discoveries in my rejects years, and decades, later that I did not have the mind or eye to see in my (relative) youth.
Very wise words and with lots of advice Alex. Thanks for sharing it with us
I’ve never thrown away my images (film or digital) because I might discover something in revisiting a shot but also because I feel it is important to see where I have come from. It’s fascinating to look at the images I shot in the 1980s vs today. While I feel I am a much better photographer now, looking back on my early work reminds me of the different ways I saw the world. Looking back on old work can inspire new work and remind me of half fleshed out ideas that I would like to return to.
Pop
Really great advice, though I admit I do dump photos often and will keep doing so. But for me, even that dumping is part of the process of enjoying my photography, and I dump photos that tell me to let them go. As for the keeper rate, for me, Ansel Adams' "if you have 12 good photos in one year, that is a good crop" quote keeps me grounded, has since I first read it. Also like your advice to pay attention to the image while you create it, to be mindful of what we capture, since I often take 2 or 3 shots of my sublect matter, but have at times also just snapped once and moved on. I figure it is part of the fun of WTF did I get and what will I do with it in post. So thank you for again posting something that sets em to reflecting on how I practice this art we so love.
Enjoyed the video. I actually have thousands of digital photos backed up going all the way back to 2001. It's a habit I've tried to break because at times it makes me feel like a picture hoarder, but I can never delete anything I took the time to shoot. It's nice to see someone say this is a good thing. I do enjoy going through my old photos every now and then because sometimes I find treasures I didn't know I had because I hadn't the skill yet to really see what I took at the time.
You, sir, have the most amazing penchant for the right message at just the right time. Great video.
Thank you
Mistakes are everything. I love experimenting. Thanks for this!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and comments.... agree totally with your comments in my photography journey... cheers 😀
Thank you for sharing your love of photography with us❤
This channel and T.Hopper is like going to school for photography ✌️
This was some of the best advice again!
Sometimes I go to photograph certain place pr a scene and take dozens of photos just to ”be sure I got it” makes me not even want to open that folder in lightroom etc to pick my favourite. It’s a really hard decision to pick “the best”.
I could have ”chosen” that best frame when I was out there and then I would have had a single frame to edit and look at when I import it to my computer.
And when I try to think this way I start to lean away from new modern camera gear. I don’t need those crazy resolutions, sharpness and frames per seconds. That said, someone shooting sports might want those crazy fast bursts and one printing huge, perfect looking landscapes might benefit from megapixels. But I’m not one of either.
Great point, my friend! It may be because photography has a certain serendipitous, random element that may not reveal itself instantly. Some of my best photography was from images that were not obviously my best, but with minor tweaks were real winners. Occasionally, the time between taking the shot and the revision was many years.
I recently captured a photo I'm very proud of just messing around with a bike light on a coffee table. Photo in question didn't immediately stand out but it grew on me over days. I tried to replicate the settings to get a better version of the same photo but simply couldn't. Even though that photo is flawed, it feels even more precious to me now!
Very thought-provoking with good points. Like the new 'set'. Interesting to see Minor White making a comeback. Good photography advice never dates. Getting the head around 'equivalence' was something I had to do years ago and it paid off with regard to understanding the medium. Maybe you should do a video. You should do a video! Best wishes for your new home.
I’m just an old guy who loved my beginnings in a great Camera Club late 60s with early ‘trophy’ successes and regrettable losses. Being young at that time you make wrong assumptions resulting in total loss. - Backup, Copy, keep on a spare drive- upload to iCloud!-. Fortunately, I still have many 35mm negs/transparencies in great condition. You have helped me ‘think’ more about my images and revisiting is a great habit…..seeing again with new eyes and post techniques. Thank you, I will be watching for more…
Great message. 👍🥂
This is great, thanks.
Great information, thanks.
great points! thanks
Thank you. All the best. 👍😎
I regularly go through my 'rejects'. There might not be anything worthwhile, but there can be several that can be used for practice in post to try and get a decent image: colour correction, masking etc. Occasionally there's a crop that'll just make the photo that I didn't see. If nothing else, I, hopefully, can work out where I went wrong and learn from it.
Good vid as always, cheers.
This is fantastic, thank you!
You're very welcome!
Oh, man. I have been guilty of this. This was an excellent presentation.
Something I have recently tried is taking an old action camera and setting it up in the cab of my vehicle set to interval shooting. When I get home I go through the pictures and see what images I can make out of the photos it has taken. It’s been fun to do as I could be in London one day and the highlands of Scotland the next.
Love this. I keep all my photos apart from the blatant dodgy ones. It’s funny how years later I look back and sometimes, I’m surprised good or bad, that I took those photos.
Returning to shoot on film made me remember how much we spray all the time in digital without take a time to enjoy the act and the art of photographing! By the way I stopped deleting my photos after regreting dearly to remember months after that these were good shoots but them gone for good... i think that today I only delete the photos out of focus.. Thanks for this video is so useful.
It's interesting that this video came out today. Today I've been going through some images on a hard drive I shot back in 2016. I thought they were awful, and started considering deleting them. Now I'm going to take my time and go through them. Thanks a million… 🙏🏿
Yesssss! I've never deleted a photo! *Continues watching*
Ah yes, the keeper rate. Admittedly I do sometimes "work a scene" or take one photo, then adjust the angle and shoot again. But since shooting film exclusively I've learned to shoot better by shooting less. This isn't my being cost aware, it is as you said, "respect each frame." Take the time to see the photograph you are making before you make the exposure - and don't take it if it doesn't feel right...or do! Pinhole photography and Diana cameras help us to partner with time and light and glass and emulsion - and to accept their input into our artistic endeavors. Embrace wabi-sabi.
Thank you Alec
And thank you for bring Minor White into the conversation - thank you!
The new location is great and pleasing, if you can do something about the echo in the audio then this is a good spot to film.
Contact sheets, a good idea. I did that for years with film.
I’ve been shooting since 1980. And in the digital world, I’m still shooting as if I have film in my camera! I sometimes forget that I can change the ISO on the fly! I do think of the composition, lighting, exposure before I push the button. And I don’t throw away any photos, good or bad. Sometimes I’m looking through my hard drive and I find a photo I thought didn’t work, and then I throw it into photoshop and see what I can do with it.
Hi Alex,
I watched this episode with great interest, and as it progressed I felt somewhat vindicated for my approach to my photography. I started with film in the late 70s and worked under a professional (ex British SAS) in Australia. Film was expensive so care was taken over each shot. Especially when shooting 5" x 4" cut sheet. Fast forward ..
I have been shooting modelling portfolios for the past 5 years. Most shoots are around three hours, and I shoot slow and the only reason to shoot the same shot more than once is to correct a pose or an expression or a misfire of the strobes. I shoot slow, so I have around 150 - 200 images per shoot, another photographer I know shoots 2000 in the same time. I am teaching the model so I provide all of the images from the shoot to her, and I process every image to be the best it can be , even if it is a bad one, because I am teaching them how to become "light aware" so that when they walk into another studio a quick look around will inform them of the lighting positions. Since April 2016 I have put 55,000 images through my studio, and I have processed every image. This has had a beneficial effect because now my processing speed is higher, I don't use presets, and another benefit is that when I revisit my work from 2016 I can start again on an image and achieve a different result, and given that this pandemic has prompted our State Government to enact the most draconian lockdowns, I have had plenty of time to revisit the past because the present is appalling and the future is in the hands of idiots.
So here's to slow photography.
Andrew
@algfinephotography
Letting go of masses of old pictures I find liberating. Looking back on currated archive is fun but going through tousand of photos is a chore. Storage might be cheap but digging takes ages.
Data storage is cheap, they're all keepers, it's just that I only like some well enough to do further processing today.
Good advice. I only delete photos that are complete rubbish or exact duplicates of another.
Excellent insight! I grew up with film and switched to digital and now do both. I think part of my film habits were brought over to digital. Most of my cameras I have really don't have the abilities to rapid fire shutter. So i never use it and I am happy that I don't. I end up with a lot of blurred and smeared images at times when subjects are moving. I never delete in or out of the camera, never felt it was necessary. I viewed those photos as part of the experience. Take them away and part of the process is lost.
As an enthusiast, all my primary cameras, such as my first SLR, the Nikon F2A purchased in the late seventies, has motor drive. Not much different from shooting with the early DSLR. IMO, each of us just need to come up with our own methodology and best practice, since others came from different backgrounds and environments.
Flash drives are cheap these days with ridiculous storage capacities. I've never deleted my photos (mainly out of tedium) but also, yes I've gone back and either scrutinized and learned from what I had done, use it as a source of progress checking, and sometimes, on rare occasions, i've found a gem, something buried in the shot I didn't see at first dismissal. Good vid, mate.
edit: might check your audio, though, this video was way quiet; I had to crank my macbook's volume. Thx and cheers.
Just as I accepted that frames on a film strip can not be deleted, so as I treated my digital captures.
Not only do you learn by reviewing your mistakes, I was also under the impression that early on that media cards can corrupt if you keep hitting the trash button on your camera.
Besides. I have recently gone through decade old photoshoots and found some images in my folders I disregarded and reworked them. Some of those Not-so-perfect photos, be it focus or composition errors, they have become now some of my favorites after a little TLC.
I am also a big fan of "Happy Mistakes". Many great images have come from those shots.
This is why I always tell new photographers to NEVER delete images, just put them safely away in the archive and revisit them in a few years. They might become favorites for what ever reason OR just a nice record of memories as well as learning tools.
I complete agree with you. I think after 52 years doing photography, that beside the expertise, we carry on, certain "photophilosophie" came over of what we want in face of the subjets of our interest. If a photographer does not arrive to this level of subtileze at that etape of his life, it is a pity . (Sorry my English, it is not My first language)
I don't remember commenting on any of your videos before, so I'll just say I really appreciate your channel. Didn't really notice the background change. Or I noticed it, I guess, but didn't much care one way or the other. The advice to watch out for, and avoid, perfectionism is good. On the other hand, I remember the American landscape photographer, Galen Rowell, quoting the writer, Jessica Mitford, that you should "murder your darlings." Much as we might love some shots, if they're too flawed, it's in our interests to recognize that without sorrow or sentiment. Or as Jay Maisel says, if you're not your own harshest critic, you're your own worst enemy.
But I offer all that as simply another facet to your argument, not with any intention of contradicting you. For myself, I don't delete any of my pictures, at least not intentionally, and often find the happy accidents that you spoke of. But that doesn't mean the vast majority of my photographs shouldn't be destined for oblivion. That's exactly where they should go. But recognizing that makes the rarer "keepers" and the much rarer exceptional images that much more satisfying.
Finally, please excuse one bit of criticism, which is that the advertisement for Square Space was so fluidly incorporated into your talk that you were half-way through the commercial before I finally realized it was just a commercial. I get the commercial aspect of life and am not criticizing your taking a sponsorship where you can get it. But I'd be grateful if you could insert a bit of separation and let us all know when you're paying bills rather than transforming hearts and minds. It won't hurt Square Space; I'm already a customer. Thank you for your work. You're adding good, worthwhile, helpful content to the world. I wish there were more channels like yours.
Congrats on 40k subs :-)
Thanks :D
Deleting the duff shots is something I have never done, but not for the reasons you set out in the video (I never thought of them and will now look again at my archive with different eyes, thank you) but because I recognised very early that my editing skills will improve and that in time there would be something in my old files that could be used with new found and honed skills. However, I shall take the advice here and apply it to my work flow for the future, thank you for the ideas.
Thanks for watching
The pictures I liked most when I was young would be the pictures I tend to delete today. And the pictures in the trash they shine today. I can se the beauty that I took and enjoy them today. Every time I go through the old pictures I find new treasures. And if the picture is not good maybe the idea is good to be taken today.
Very good advice, I delete loads of my photos but now and then do look back on earlier ones and it’s interesting to see what’s changed. Can you arrange photos like a collage on a screen?
You could use LR to make a contact sheet - it's pretty simple to do and doesn't take long.
Back in the days i used a Mamiya 645 Super. Taking a picture was a 20 minute work of art. Find the frame (you only have 3 fix lenses as an amateur), check the light, check the environment and wait for the moment. Twelve shutters later you have to change film, if you are lucky enough to store some in the bag.
There are days when i use the same way with my a7. That are good days …
Another point about not deleting is that your processing skills will improve over time and frames that you considered 'unsalvagable' may, with the right skill set, produce glorious images in the future.
First I hated the sponsored bit, but then I realise it's nice to see you getting paid and that you have grown the channel to become "mainstream".
Now on the journey to lose my cataracts which require me to review most exposures, and delete the badly focused ones or that have other defects. I have never computed nor cared much about a keeper rate. Cheapskates like me who used a lot of film don’t need to be told to consider the image before pressing the shutter. However, sometimes we do change our editor program. I was a fan of Nikon’s Capture NX versions which incorporated early NIK technology. As a beginner, I made one lion in grass pic with grass too green. I recently viewed this in DxO Photolab 4 and discovered I liked the photo better than I had back in 2009 and re-edited it gaining an accurate rendering that pleased me more greatly than I expected. This is in line with your suggestion about contact sheets, sort of. Ok, a bit of a stretch, but I’m sure glad I kept that lion shot!
Impressive insight…
Good tips, good talk - and a nice house 😉
This strikes as related to why we are taking photographs; is it to please others online or to please ourselves. If the former then whatever is not in vogue is a 'mistake'. If the latter, it's whether the photo achieved what was intended. Technical perfection, pin sharp, etc. do not define a good photo but whether the photo captures something about people, nature, etc. that speaks to viewers is what defines a good photo. Technical proficiency only makes one a skilled technician (being technical proficient is important). Capturing a mood, etc. in a photo is what makes a photographer.
Thanks!
thanks John :)
I agree about keeping your images when one does not shoot en mass. There seem to be two schools of thought on shooting style: the Rambo Approach: instead of the precise single shot sniper, he used a machine gun and belts of ammo philosophy. The idea being that digital images cost nothing so this increases one's chances of getting that special image. The problem is that this creates a lot of waste images. In those situations I can see practical issues in keeping the potentially huge number of images involved.
It seems like we have a similar approach in applying the other philosophy: namely, to take a limited number of images that are the product of a more conservative and considered approach. Mine came from shooting with film when I had a limited capacity to carry film on my trips into the wild, and each image cost. I still have that habit of thinking more and shooting less. There were, of course, images that I declined to use as I considered them inappropriate for my purposes or not up to my standards, but I kept quite a few 'spares'.
This habit of keeping surplus images came to my rescue when my collection of about 1200 professional images were in my car when it was stolen. The car was recovered but the boxes of slides were all burnt - and that was devastating. It was years later that I was re-united with my duplicate or reject images, and was able to salvage images that took me back to places and times I thought I had lost. They no longer had relevance to my work, but they had great personal value.
I think it depends on what you are photographing? I am a spotter mainly so I am sitting around airport photographing planes, in a mechanical way I search for details, sharpness, paintwork. It is technical photograpy mostly, so I seek perfection, not errors. But then when I am going around my home town when I visit it and photograph it for sort of documentary "book" I do consider all shots before pressing shutter and never delete any even if I think they are bad. Sooo I would say that both preview, fast FPS and choosing only best ones etc have as much place in photography as the approach you mentioned.
I have begun to delete photos with a passion. I don't spray and pray anyway, but I used to save everything and had terabytes of photos I realized that I would never use. I typically take several images of the same subject from various angles and keep only those that I think are the best of the group. Getting rid of the images that aren't what I would consider keepers until I fill the card with only those images I want is really saving a lot of room in storage. If I had limitless storage and didn't have to pay for it. I still believe I would delete most of my images. I understand the premise of what you're saying. And I understand there could be some value there, but as someone who's guilty of not throwing things away and accumulating clutter, I plan to continue throwing away most of my photos with a passion.
As a relatively new photographer, I didn't realise that people literally deleted their "bad" photos. I choose the ones that I think are good and then edit them. Some of those go into my portfolio, others don't. But the ones that I deem not worth editing are not deleted. They remain in a folder because what I like now is not necessarily what I'll like next year. They also serve a purpose if they are wrongly exposed or composed.
The only pictures I delete are the shots of nothing- when I point at nothing to double check my exposure (it's an old camera). But even those are not necessarily deleted.
As a purely technical aside, I've heard that deleting individual shots in camera too often can apparently sometimes cause issues with your memory card's formatting that might corrupt the whole card. It's much better to just use your camera's format option to wipe the whole thing at once after you've copied everything onto a hard drive. I totally agree with this advice here from a creative standpoint too though, and I've definitely found some of my favourite images among the ones I'd thought of at the time as failures when reviewing them later.
There are days when I may only take a few photos, but I know I captured what I was looking for in a scene, and I am eager to download and process it. Otherwise, it is too easy to take too many photos, often of the same scene or subject, in hopes of getting a keeper, so I am ruthless in culling before archiving. I know that even if I have the time to revisit images, I have little desire to do so.
I often review my photos as thumbnails, as a triage of sorts. If it has an appeal even in a small form, it might be worth a full edit. Sometime is not the case.
I do delete a lot of photos when it is obvious that they are too under or overexposed, blurred, out of focus, or otherwise too technically incorrect to be salvageable.
A portion of the photos that I do keep to revisit are really worth the effort to try with a new processing technique or software, but I am happy with not keeping photos that were not fundamentally well captured.
I use the term keeper rate for sports/action/birds in flight. If the image is in focus or is not too far off exposure wise. I do keep all my images. I bought a new camera, it is 45mp, I shoot raw and jpg, jpg is the closest thing I do to a contact print. I am able to look at every picture quickly or put multiple images on the screen at one time like a contact print. I am a little disappointed at the 45mp images. Not that they don't look good, but that they take up so much room and take up time to review. Because of price, I have fast storage in laptop, a couple of nvme drives and slow storage 10gb external hard disk drive. I like having my images on local drives where I can go back to them easily. Once they hit the external, it is more like an archive and I do not revisit them very often. I like keeping local so I can scan them for images I didn't consider previously. What you say makes sense, the only problem is time. I only have so much time to go look through old photos to find a hidden gem or nugget that can be brought back to life, probably through editing.
Had to delete some handheld photo's of a water fall the other day. 3 stops back and as long a exposure as possible. Hoped to get that milky water. Using a tripod would have been too much work and no where to place it either. Had to use a climbing rope to gain access. The photos were simply awful. Those shots where the camera say's 'BUSY'. I always review my footage when I get home.
I have terabytes of files from shoots. I don't believe in deleting RAW files. I generally copy keepers to work on so I always have an untouched RAW to go back to. With that being said I found your video timely as I have begun to revert back to my film days in that I'm treating the camera like I only have a finite amount of film. One of the greatest benefits of working in a custom film lab years ago was learning the lab processes and how that knowledge aided in how I shot. Same applies to knowing your post capabilities. Now I am finding myself slowing way down in how i shoot and conversely my RAW dumps are getting much smaller.
Hum, you haven't seen my last several years' worth, but I agree to not delete in-camera at least. Making contact prints? That's a good idea.
Very good insite. During the conventional film camera days I was most careful about not "wasting" film. Every frame of my 36 was precious. Funny thing, when I started shooting digital I brought over the same habit. Even though I know I have over a thousand frames in my camera I still shoot like I only have 36. Sort of funny.
when I used to create windsurf photography from the water. using a water case shooting 35 Ektachrome. (500 sec. F8 no auto exposure using 28mm) only having 36 image. (try it young film photographers) many mistakes I stop tossing them and took second looks they came alive after taking another look they were awesome!
By the way I only had 36 exp then swim back to shore get completely dried off in my wetsuit being carful not to drop any water in my case so it wouldn't fog up after returning backing water. the current surf photographers create amazing work! Note I don't use the word shoot, guns shoot cameras create!
5:09 - that crowd shot is really interesting.
a factor that helped me with this concept is being barely above the poverty line, buying used, and thereby considering the number of shutter "actuations" so that my camera lasts longer.
Nice light.
As an industrial photographer I used to use a Sinar P2 plus three 6k packs plus heads on location. I took two images a day. Both keepers. 😂😂 When digital came along life became much easier. The ability for the camera to cope with mixed lighting conditions was a huge help. Each image was thought through and the concept of firing the shutter if the image wasn't correct didn't enter my head. Now Im retired I take images around and about of anything that takes my interest. However I still only fire the shutter if the image is right. Whether I'm using film or the odd time I use digital. If I get a rush of excitement I know the shots going to work but I take very few images. Maybe 4 a month and I have a camera on me at all times.
I suppose the flat print won't always let you "see everything" because the printing process won't often won't have as much dynamic range as the photo, so if you keep the exposure even across the photo there are a lot of cases where you'll have details lost in the shadows and/or the highlights.
When I began thinking that I was artistic in any sense, I learned two very important lessons: one - don't chew on the crayons and two - tear the eraser off the pencil. The errant lines that I created which led to "other-than-expected" results, were all learning opportunities. They were - each and every one - experiential teachers. I improved. I just suffered a minor setback today with my photography. An entire week's worth of work (hundreds of exposures) were deemed "unworthy" by a client. Those pictures taught me some things; though, and when I saw the whole collection; I began to feel why the individual pictures weren't all as impactful as they should have been. Well, water on a duck's back and all that. I'm switching subjects and making corrections.
Don't chew on the crayons 😁
Hi, great video as always. Do you happen to have a source for that quote of Minor White, 'the things I have not seen until now'? It's such a nice quote but I can't seem to find it associated with White. Many thanks!
It's in the Aperture book I linked to.
IIRC it's from an article called 'The Miniature cameraist' (or something like that). He made a comment in the article about how that line is what he could have titled the piece.
@@ThePhotographicEye Thank you so very much! That issue of Aperture with his article is freely available in the Aperture Archive website, so I already downloaded it and I'll read it through later. I find that quote very poetic; I like to take note of these types of quotes together with their sources for any future references. I really appreciate your reply.
I almost skipped this one due to the title being in the negative. Many “don’t do” videos/articles on the internet are pretty annoying and the opposite of your encouragement to, “Do!” I’ve done enough of what you describe to know that there are a few gems in my accidents. You’ve only scratched the surface here. I would love to see a follow up video on some specific things we might do to learn from the images or even “save” them, convert them to keepers.
I started shooting film for real and built a darkroom about 3 years ago. I started shooting what I really wanted. Avoiding what I call the sunset Peter Lik work. The Goal to capture something more intimate and meaningful for me. Not caring so much if the image was perfect. I just wanted it in my camera. Something I can leave behind with my daughters and granddaughter when I pass. Something they know Dads hands created this and it was important to him. There is a painful violent reason behind this change but that is another story :)
"don't delete your photographs."
*me with a film camera*...noted.
You could do a Roy Striker and punch a pencil through the negs :D
Yes, that's why I thought it was worth talking about this - with film it wasn't really an issue, but these days so many people seem quick to delete anything for whatever trivial reason.
@@ThePhotographicEye LOL, oh dear, I'm not THAT confident yet with capturing the right shot. Many times with my models (or any other "key" shot), I'll enlarge a photo or multiples, and then sleep on it over the course of a few days to see which I'll make a final print of.
I still suck....What doesn't suck are your videos, keep it up :D
Keeper rate. Digital film is cheap as dirt so take as many photos as you want. Shoot a lot and shoot often. Shoot everything, especially if you're a street photographer as stories develop as you carry on with your photo walk. Some of my very best photographs were shots I took and mentally filed away as junk only to return to them weeks later and go, wow!