Man I hate those mornings..

I finally have a wonderful morning free to get away and shoot some landscapes. I head out to a somewhat remote site I have been thinking about shooting for a while. Get set up and take some shots. Move and take some more. Start walking around and take in some cool looking scenery. Feeling pretty good as the sun rises. Take a few more and wrap up and head home. Review shots on the computer and not ONE shot is worth using for anything. Just all crap for some reason or another.

So should I be happy that I got up, walked around for an hour and watched the sun rise? Or should I be pissed that I wasted a morning on a card full of crap shots? I guess there are worse ways to spend a morning, either way.

All depends on whether you've identified the reason. Seeing the number of posts you have on this site I suspect you have very high standards. Perhaps this was just an occasion for snapshots instead of artwork.

i'd definitely not feeling happy, but what does feeling crap do you? Absolutely nothing, so i'd go for thinking that i went out for the sun raise and may be thinking or what else can i do to get better shots at the same location/setting.

I think we all have those days.

Look on the positive side; at least you have the insight and ability to cull every shot from an outing if they don't work.

It means you know and appreciate the true keepers when they come along!

Feel good that you went out and tried. It's better then letting the camera sit in the bag, which I regret doing all to often.

Hopefully you learned WHY the shots were no good, weather, bad lighting, whatever it may be..

Try converting them all to B&W maybe there will be something there that you don't see in color.

Enjoy it for what it was - a nice morning walk followed by watching the sun come up.

Some days just aren't meant to be.

Sometimes the shots we capture don't quite communicate the "vision" we imagine, and that's life. Now, a question before you trash the shots: can you do something to enhance the photo to more resemble your memory? I'm not talking about "Photoshop trickery" but more a combination of cropping to the viewpoint that you remember and tweaking the nuances of highlight and shadow and contrast and saturation to represent your impression of the scene.

That is all like developing images in the darkroom to bring out the best of an image, except now it's the digital darkroom.

See I don't get up as my mind is to hazy to do photography I end up staying up all night. Maybe this would help? I normally put on some music like Jack Johnson and get my creative juices flowing!

I have a project I'm meant to be working on which will have a series of 8 images but it means I have to be up from 3am each day most likely over 2 weeks +

I like Neil and Tony's responses. Watching the sun come up is never a waste of time, regardless of whether you're able to capture the essence of what you felt at that moment in time.

It is a common thing for those of us that are reasonably adept at Photoshop to revisit our older images and tweak them here and there to make them conform to our memories as they are now.

We often see the question "what is your keeper rate" on these forums with the common response being 75-90%. I would submit that it is a whole lot less than that for those that are truly critical of our work.
Think about it, if you were to print a book with your best images to pass down to your family...how many images would it contain?

Photography is more than taking pictures, it is capturing that moment in time that only you can "see" and creating that moment so that others can share that fleeting vision.

I have days like that. Sometimes I'll get nothing worthy at all.

On the flip side, I occasionally have days like one day a couple weeks ago... it seemed like almost every single shot was good and I had a hard time picking the best.

I guess it averages out over time.

We all get those days. I've had trips where I didn't even press the shutter!

I went to Monument Valley yesterday and took 3 shots. Crappy sky, poor light, bitchy kids. Sometimes you can't win. Just live to fight another day.

chauncey wrote in post #10485293
We often see the question "what is your keeper rate" on these forums with the common response being 75-90%. I would submit that it is a whole lot less than that for those that are truly critical of our work.

Same here, but i think those people that say that they have 75-90% keep rate, a lot of them say that merely because their picture is somewhat in focus and somewhat around the exposure though.

if I get one really good picture out a day trip...i'm happy....it's about doing the hobby I love to do not the result I get out of it. Sure, who doesn't like keepers even a few out of a trip...but most important is you don't repeat what you did but learn some from it and improve from it. It's not alway going to be a successful trip but make sure it's an educational one.

neilwood32 wrote in post #10484896
Enjoy it for what it was - a nice morning walk followed by watching the sun come up.

Some days just aren't meant to be.

Agreed!