Getting burnt out from shooting & editing

During snowcross season I was cranking off roughly 2500 shots a weekend, and this went on for 6 straight weeks. It was a full time job to drive to each race, shoot, edit, print and catalog each image for sale. I was really pooped out by the time the last race weekend came up, that I slept for 12 straight hours beforehand, but when I saw the way people reacted to the images and my book, I realized why I did it.

To see the look of shock and amazement on someones face when they are stunned by a shot of themseleves, is what really keeps me from burnout.

I find that what keeps me going physically and mentally is proper eating and alot of Rockstar energy drinks.

Learn to automate. Batch certain things, create actions with stops for things you can't batch so you only have to be proactive about the editing when required, save the curves you find yourself repeatedly applying & create actions out of them; if you use Lightroom take advantage of the Presets feature and create one for each thing you keep doing over and over. If there's something you do to ALL your photos, apply it upon importing, etc.

Quite honestly, why are you processing all 2000 shots? Lightroom has been a lifesaver for me as it allows me to sort and decide which images I want to PP and which ones can go in the trash.

An example would be my daughter's recent 2nd birthday. I had a total of 250ish shots. I went through LR and decided on the best shots of various "events" of the party. I PP a total of 54 images.

Be honest with yourself, if you pop off 2K shots are month, are they all really worth spending your time PP?

I find even better than Lightroom is AcdSee Pro, full screen previews as fast as I can view them and move on to the next one. There isn't even a delay from the thumbnail to the full screen preview. It is really easy to go through a couple thousand images when you can do it this fast. Also there is single key tag, then I sort my tagged images to the top.

Sorry to clarify a little better here's my workflow process

I use Lightroom and what I do is break down Catalogs by events.

I filter through them and flag the ones I keep to PP

Usually at that point depending on what I want I usually have a 25% retention in photos I like.

I PP those. From the wedding though my brother did half the shooting and he did run amuck and have a lot of bad images, lots of duplicates as well. Same thing with me. When I was shooting pre anticipation to capture a moment I let the shutter go. So out of a series of 8, 1 or 2 might be a keeper. And this is narrowing the field of 25% of the keepers. So of the 2000 pictures if I have 200 viable photos I'll be happy. Right now I'm sitting at 150 and still have the "getting ready" photos to look over.

Again if this was a paid gig it might be complete different

Thanks all for chiming in, oddly enough it was encouraging. I can Definately agree to how the more you shoot the less you shoot. As the day progressed I shot less and shot what counted. I just didn't want to miss anything in the beginning.

If I can get away from an all day event with 800 photos I think that'll be perfect. I guess I just need to be more familiar and shoot conservative.

pixelharmony wrote in post #5737804
If I can get away from an all day event with 800 photos I think that'll be perfect.

I do about 1000-1200 on a 7-8 hour shoot (wedding), with quite a few being "safety duplicates" and some being shooting through a moment.

Consider this...In the days of film SLRs, people shot with much more discrimination than they do now, because it cost real money for film and processing, so you did not want to waste shots. A single day of shooting might result in one or two 36-exp rolls of film to process and edit for keepers. And if you were a large format shooter, that might only be a few shots of 4x5, each one the equivalent cost of a full roll of 35mm to process! I have come back with a SINGLE 4x5 shot, or even none! Too much shooting is NOT good. Shooting with a specific goal in mind is good, because it exercises the brain before it exercises the shutter. Some of the most creatively expanding shooting outings have been when going to a deadly boring locale for a half day, and forcing yourself to 'see' in ways which you never otherwise would have seen (in a too-photogenic locale).

I shoot a lot because I have 27, 900 horsepower offroad race trucks making a 50-60', 180 degree circle around me at close to 60 mph, 3 wide and making contact. I shoot a lot to catch the action and fiberglass body panels flying off. It's not excessive, it's necessary to capture the action.

Also there are a lot of other competitors in other classes, and I need to get close to 40 or so shots of each driver for sales, and possible sales.

My biggest shoot that required editing was the Minnesota State High School Boys Hockey Tournament in March. 3000 photos in two days, thankfully didn't have to edit ALL of them, but it was an amazing experience.

The second day had the biggest attendance for a hockey game on the state of Minnesota - somewhere around 19,500 packed the 18,000 seat XCEL.