I hear the word keepers a lot, on photography forums and on conversation with fellow enthusiasts.

Here's some food for thought from Vincent Laforet. In case you guys don't know who he is, he was one of three photographers that Newsweek sent to Beijing to cover the Olympics. Some of his stuff (especially his aerial shots in the past), is simply awe inspiring.

"So I looked into at what Sports Illustrated shot during the Olympics with their ten staff photographers there - SI shot over 300,000 images of which their staff kept 17,000. One of their editors took that down to 1046

 

wow, cool info!

 

I hear the goal is 20% keepers and 1% portfolio. Magazines are playing on a different level. SI couldn't print 135 images on one topic anyway.

 

wow, interesting. i feel like an idiot when i take 50 shots of my dogs and only 1 or 2 turn out good. i'm still a noob, so hopefully i'll get a little better.

 

I wonder how many of those shots were film vs digital..

 

A regular customer in my restaurant used to be the Pepsi print ad art director. He told me that you can consider yourself a world class photographer is you can get 6 keepers on a 36roll. So, basically 6 out of 36 is considered phenominal, 4 is great, 2 is good, and 1 is ok.

 

I want to put a different spin on this, I think that if a great majority of newbies, amateurs,advanced amateurs, and pros and myself included would just slow down and think before hitting the shutter button we would all raise our rate of keepers.

First and foremost digital is its own worst enemy, most just blindly shoot away see something they dont like and keep shooting hoping it will fix itself. WRONG!

There are tons of factors that change this rate. Just do an exercise next time your out shooting and you review your shots write down what makes each shot a keeper and a tosser. Things like composition,lighting,subject matter,sharpness,wrong shutter speed, wrong aperture etc.

Once you have found why you toss most of your shots begin to work on what the biggest failing you have is. Find out and work on the thing that your weakest in.

I personally have done this in my own shooting and I have found out 40 years later. "im 44 been shooting for 40" that just a few seconds in thinking mode before hitting that shutter drastically improves the rate of keepers. Nowadays I feel like 80% plus of what I shoot falls into the keeper category. Dont confuse that with the award winning category thats a whole other ballgame.

Also remember the hardest person to satisfy is yourself, we are our own worst critics. The other problem is on most of the photo forums today there is a whole lot of snobberish going on. I see it constantly someone will post a pic that they took and think is good and go whattaya think? Be specific on what you want your critique about. Come on your leaving yourself wide open to the world to pick out what they dont like about your photo. Ive seen some crazy responses to things such as oh the 5th flower to the way right in the back lower left of the scene is missing a petal Come on! But it proves the point the forums will break you if your posting and trying to satisfy all its never going to happen. And yes someone will always find something wrong with your photo. On the other hand if you ask for a specific critique there are a lot of people out there that will be able and are willing to help you.

Stop and find out what your goal in photography is, dont make it unrealistic dont try to get there all in one day. Work yes notice i said work on your shortcomings eventually you will see your rate of keepers go up.

Now if your rate of keepers is award winners, That will always be less than 1%

Happy shooting!

 

Some good advice. I wish I were less trigger happy. My computer hates me for it.

 

ALL my shots are keepers. And my HDD free space is suffering for it. (In case you don't get it, it means I'm a digital packrat and rarely delete even the blurry trash photos.) Very very very few are portfolio.

 

My tally at Mosport:

IMSA Challenge, Imsa lites, Star Mazda on Thurs; ALMS on tuesday, ALMS + Star Mazda Fri to Sunday

2654 pictures, and I've already tossed all the ones that are out of focus / car clipped / fuzzy, which is probably another 5 to 600 over the course of the weekend.

There are 68 on my flickr out of 150 that I picked out that were deemed worthy for public display, and I can foresee 2 maybe 3 going in my port.

Worthy: 5%
Gallery: 2%
Port: 0.1%

Overall, fairly happy. Tried some new stuff and I nailed a few; the old stuff is pretty standard-fare and getting kinda boring.