Do you find yourself taking way to many pictures?

[mep42]

I have just finished shooting a 24 hour event and going back through my photos I have almost 1,000 images. With my current machine using iphoto it is just such a hassle to go through all of these photos one by one. I will be getting a MBP with upgraded ram to help move things along and either Aperture or Photoshop elements. Granted I still have to learn how to really edit my photos which will make my work flow longer, I just feel there has to be a better way, either not shooting as much or something on the post-shoot side.

Anyways.... rant over:lol::lol::lol:

Mark

[tfd888]

Well after shooting 2 dress rehearsals and a performance of a dance show over the period of 2 days, I found myself with just under 2,000 images :lol:

What was the 24 hr event?

[bjyoder]

In one night, as I was still learning to shoot concerts, I took well over 2,200 shots in about 3 hours. It was after that (and a bit of school), that I decided I needed better vision.

Now, for a three hour concert at a local bar, I'll average about 1,000 shots.

[nicksan]

Depends...just shot a Baptism and came home with less than 200 shots.
Last month, I shot a baseball game and came back with > 1000 shots...

[kay188]

OP... and that is why Mac < PC! :D
LOLZ?

I've shot a 2 hour event and ended up with 500+ pictures. Near 600.
Couple hours ago, I just went though all of them one by one deleting the blurry, terrible, exposed incorrectly, photos.

2 weeks ago I shot over 800 photos for an 2 hour event. Went through all of them again, and same procedure.
It wasn't that time consuming.

Windows Picture and Fax view is FTW. LULZ.

[mattyb240]

OP... and that is why Mac < PC! :D
LOLZ?

I've shot a 2 hour event and ended up with 500+ pictures. Near 600.
Couple hours ago, I just went though all of them one by one deleting the blurry, terrible, exposed incorrectly, photos.

2 weeks ago I shot over 800 photos for an 2 hour event. Went through all of them again, and same procedure.
It wasn't that time consuming.

Windows Picture and Fax view is FTW. LULZ.

Lol you can do that all through preview for mac just by hitting space bar, think the OP is just being lazy!:)

[bjyoder]

Windows Picture and Fax view is FTW. LULZ.

Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com/) is far superior. It takes - maybe literally - half the time.

[stathunter]

Personally I think you can never take too many photos. I typically take 3K-5K photos at a wedding - I did a short wedding (6 hours) the other day - and only took about 3K photos. I did a photo shoot for a magazine cover - lasted about 45 mins and I took about 700 photos. Most clients do not even know how many photos I take -- if you make them feel comfortable and relaxed they do not notice how fast I am shooting.
I find it is easier to cull through the photos than wish I would have taken a few more - you can always delete but rarely do another shoot. And in the end when the client has tons of fantastic photos you will get lots of nice referrals.

[nicksan]

^Yeah, it just depends on the magnitude of the shoot.
For anything paid, I make sure I take as many redundant shots as I can. Absolutely. I don't find it time consuming to go through the photos afterward. In fact I would rather have the problem of having to choose from 10 versions than to just have 1 that isn't really up to par with what I had in mind.

[bjyoder]

Personally I think you can never take too many photos. I typically take 3K-5K photos at a wedding - I did a short wedding (6 hours) the other day - and only took about 3K photos. I did a photo shoot for a magazine cover - lasted about 45 mins and I took about 700 photos. Most clients do not even know how many photos I take -- if you make them feel comfortable and relaxed they do not notice how fast I am shooting.
I find it is easier to cull through the photos than wish I would have taken a few more - you can always delete but rarely do another shoot. And in the end when the client has tons of fantastic photos you will get lots of nice referrals.

I won't argue the fact that having too many good photos is a better problem than not having one that's good enough. Who would? But I've learned that taking a bit more time will let you focus on the shot itself, and you'll end up with as many keepers and fewer shots.

Take my original example of shooting 2,200+ photos during one performance for a band. I spent way too much time going through photos after the fact. Since then, with a little bit of selective shooting, I've gotten as many good photos of a band's performance all while shooting far fewer frames (1,000 or less, normally).

I guess I look at it this way: Anyone can go out and shoot a ridiculous number of images and get some good keepers, that's what probability is all about.

[Marius B]

I've just bought Lightroom, and it helps alot on the workflow after a shoot with a lot of pictures.

1. empty your card
2. surf through the pictures and press x (reject) on the bad photos. Delete rejected photos.
3. surf trough again and flag the keepers, the rest you dont care about :)
4. If you have many pictures that look a like, you can group these, just check them and put the one you like best first, this is the picture that will show and if you move from library to develop, this is the picture that will be edited.
5. sort the ones with flag and start proscessing.
6. After proscessing you can put the pictures you wanna send for proofing in quick collection, by clicking on a little mark on the actual pictures in library mode.


I am new to Lightroom, so I still has a lot to learn, but so far I like it alot :)

[jacuff]

Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com/) is far superior. It takes - maybe literally - half the time.

And displays the colors correctly like maybe what percentage of the time? ;)

[FZ1]

I've just bought Lightroom, and it helps alot on the workflow after a shoot with a lot of pictures.
Lightroom really helps A LOT. It would take me twice as much time trying to do them all in Photoshop.

[bjyoder]

And displays the colors correctly like maybe what percentage of the time? ;)

Oh, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't use Irfanview to edit. Ever! But it runs much faster to sort through the photos than Windows... ;)

[nicksan]

I won't argue the fact that having too many good photos is a better problem than not having one that's good enough. Who would? But I've learned that taking a bit more time will let you focus on the shot itself, and you'll end up with as many keepers and fewer shots.

Take my original example of shooting 2,200+ photos during one performance for a band. I spent way too much time going through photos after the fact. Since then, with a little bit of selective shooting, I've gotten as many good photos of a band's performance all while shooting far fewer frames (1,000 or less, normally).

I guess I look at it this way: Anyone can go out and shoot a ridiculous number of images and get some good keepers, that's what probability is all about.

Again, this really depends on the situation.

I barely had a 10 second window to get the Baptism "money shot" so you can bet your behind I was blasting away. Center AF point, loosely framed with almost total disregard to detailed composition (crop later). Even then, I barely got anything b/c I was blocked out.

I shot a few music performances a few months ago and I had all kinds of time thinking about the shot, chimping, adjusting, all that. I came home with a small amount of photos and picked the winners out of potential keepers.

Usually, I am very selective since I don't normally do this type of shooting. But when I am doing a paid shoot, yeah, I'll err on the side of caution...

[nicksan]

I use Adobe Bridge -> PS.
I can work through images very quickly. Perhaps not as quickly as LR, but I don't use LR. I have it, but never got around to it. I'm so used to my current workflow...

I have to admit however, if I have > 200 to 300 images in a folder, things get sluggish...:-)

[kidfiji]

On my last school field trip, I took around 800.

[shomat]

1. empty your card
2. surf through the pictures and press x (reject) on the bad photos. Delete rejected photos.
3. surf trough again and flag the keepers, the rest you dont care about :)
4. If you have many pictures that look a like, you can group these, just check them and put the one you like best first, this is the picture that will show and if you move from library to develop, this is the picture that will be edited.
5. sort the ones with flag and start proscessing.
6. After proscessing you can put the pictures you wanna send for proofing in quick collection, by clicking on a little mark on the actual pictures in library mode.


That's my exact workflow, word-for-word. With Lightroom and a fast computer, having too many photos is not something I am ever concerned with. What I do strive for though, is to up the percentage of "keepers".

[DStanic]

I try to keep my camera on slow-speed continuous (5fps on the 30D I find I take too many redundant shots). Unless I'm shooting sports or something where it's more required.

Shooting RAW and then using Lightroom is a great way to deal with several hundred (or more) files.

Upgrading my computer from an old AMD64 3000+ to Intel Quad core with 4gb of ram sure helped things! :lol: I shoot RAW most of the time now, because it takes only a fraction of the time to export as it did before.

But for certain situations, like a wedding for example, you can never really take too many shots. Better to sort them out afterwards then sit and wish you had more better shots. :)

[mep42]

Does anyone have any experience with all three, Photoshop elements, aperture, and light-room? I am trying to decide between these three.

[jerseyfinn]

Well, the nature of digital is why not keep shooting? Memory is cheap, expansive & costs you nothing to temporarily grab those pixels. As mentioned, it's better to have more choices than less, especially if you make a living from it. My own photography is purely for enjoyment, but I "fire away" when in the field, more so to get the shot than to get the right exposure as I'm slowly getting that end of the equation down. We just complete a 16 day holiday in Costa del Sol. My final count? Some 3300 photos taken in a variety of places/circumstance. But it averages 200 shots a day.

But I also hear Benjamin loud and clear when he suggests concentrating more upon the quality/composition of the shot and less on aggregate captures. Right now, I'm working through that mountain of photos -- reduced to 3000 by rejecting the clear losers and allowing other lesser images a reprieve until I process them. Ideally, one should hone their field skills & focus upon what is really before you and exclude those lesser things or poor compositing from your shot straight off ( photography is really a process of exclusion in the first place ). I'm growing more aware of this when I carefully work through my images and ponder what I got right and wrong in each frame. So I relate to what Benjamin says as I've just had the same thought working my latest images. But it remains instructive to me as I plow through my pixel pile.

One thing I do know is that digital opens the door for many more of us who want to become more adept photographers. The trick is to remain mindful of what you did or did not accomplish and to learn from these newly acquired insights and apply them in the field the next time in your quest for meaningful images.

Barry

[Marius B]

That's my exact workflow, word-for-word. With Lightroom and a fast computer, having too many photos is not something I am ever concerned with. What I do strive for though, is to up the percentage of "keepers".

One more nice thing with Lightroom, is that if you crop your picture to f.ex. 8x10 and you want another crop later, it is no problem because the cropping is not done to picturefile only in the settings to the picture, so can go back and make a new crop on the original picture. Actually you can save several crops as virtual copies, ready for printing or web etc, withou taking up much space on your HD. You have 1 Raw file, but in library you will se different crops etc, black&white or color? 1 raw file + 1 virtual copy.

M

[RDKirk]

When I see a picture, I take a picture, but I don't take a picture until I see a picture. I don't do that any differently than I did with film.

What I will do with digital, though, is frequently take shots for "composite fodder." For instance, when shooting a family portrait with small children, I will take shots concentrating on each child in turn to make sure I get an optimum expression for each, then combine them in a composite.