I made a comment on the Sony forum on dpreview to the effect that I had taken over 1000 images on a 10 day trip to Arizona in July with my H9 (there was a lot of controversy over the image quality of the H9 along about then) and that I had processed over 200 to very satisfying finished images. One of the folks there asked what happened to the rest. Was something wrong with them (as in the camera didn’t work right or the image quality was not satisfying).
Of course that’s not the point with most of today’s digital P&S cameras. You can depend on almost every shot being technically correct: correct exposure (even in very tricky situations), correct focus, etc. Anything the camera controls is going to be pretty much right, almost every time.
The point is not that there was something wrong with 800 of my images…they just weren’t the right images.
The magic of digital is that you can shot all around a subject, from every side and every angle, as many shots as you want or have time for, and not worry about the cost of film or developing. On a trip like that in the film days, I would have ordered my film in bulk from NYC to get the best price: maybe 10-12 rolls of 36 exposure Fujichrome or Ektachrome, and I would have been counting exposures from the first day. Every shot would have been a decision: “If I take one more here…then that’s one less I will be able to take tomorrow. What if I see something better, something more compelling, something more image-worthy?”
Then, when I got home I generally had to wait a pay period or two before sending the film off for processing.
And, of course, when the prints or slides came back, two-thirds of them went in the trash on the first sort. (You have to have experienced it to know how painful that is!)
Digital is another world.
There is no reason not to take as many views of any subject as the subject, your time, and your interest allows. High/low, against the sky/against the ground, from the left/from the right, with foreground objects/without foreground objects, horizon center/horizon on the bottom magic-thirds line/horizon on the top magic-thirds line, subject center/subject one third right/subject one third left, subject high in the frame/subject low in the frame, a series of bracketed exposures from -2EV to +2EV, program shifts for maximum depth of field/minimum depth of field, wide-angle view/normal view/telephoto view, wide-angle macro/tel-macro…etc./etc.
It is not that you have to make these choices on the spot…take them all!! Take as many different views of the subject as you can imagine. Time enough to worry about which one is the right view when you see them up on the monitor at home, and your critical self can take over from your creative self.
There’s the key: before digital the creative self and the critical self had to keep switching roles in real time, with the subject right there in front of you, waiting for you to make up your mind. Today, the creative self has free reign in the field, while actually taking the images. Then, at home, in the privacy of your own space, you can turn on the critical self and make the hard choices. If you pick the best two from each sequence to postprocess, you will almost certainly come up with one really fine image. (My experience…your mileage may vary.)
From the series above, I produced 10 satisfying images. These two are my favorites. The first was my first image in flickr‘s Explore.
Okay, that’s big subject and one that lends itself to multiple views. Here’s another example.
From this sequence of St. Anne’s Church in Kennebunkport Maine, the one that I invested in was this one.
It has been in my “Most Interesting According to Flickr” set for months now.
Were the other images bad…defective in some way? Of course not. Even the two that are dark against the brightness of the sky can be processed up (add a little fill-light) to be quite satisfying. It’s just that this one satisfies both my creative and my critical self better than the others.
From the same day, here are just three shots of the same subject.
The winner (after postprocessing):
And then, of course, there is the traditional use of multiple exposures: the motor drive sequence to capture moving or active subjects.
On the Sony H9, you can hold the shutter release down and it will take images at about 3 per second until the memory card fills. From the sequence above I got this (again, after postprocessing).
So, the point of this ramble is “Why take just one…”
We are working with digital image files. Fill your card. If that actually happens…buy a bigger card. Let your creative self loose in the field. Plenty of time when you are back at the computer to let the critical self have a go.
In the end you will come up with an astounding number of images that satisfy both your creative and your critical selves…and, very likely, most anyone who chances to see them. And isn’t that what it is all about?
(as a follow up to this, I plan, one of these days, to do a piece on the effects of point of view…on what different points of view do to how the image is perceived. Watch this space!)
I completely agree with you on this subject. The more you take, the better chance of getting a better photo. Been doing that for well over 30 years. I started off doing game action sports photography, and, with a roll of 36 photos, I would choose just one for newspaper use from same. For about 9 or 10 games I would use as much as 30 rolls of film or more per season. That was, of course, years before I got into digital photography. I mainly used B&W in those days and only developed the film myself and used my enlarger to view the 35mm frames. I mostly used the 400 to 1000 ISO, depending on the weather and the time of day.The photo editor of one of the newspapers gave me that tip. She said because they wouldn’t blow up my cropped photos much larger than 5 X 7′s. When I used color film, I just had the film developed and not printed up most of the time because I also printed the color film up as B&W’s in my own dark room. I’d occassionally have enlargements done up for a parent or two, such as my color photo of one of the players flying tackle.
Many people don’t understand why one takes so many photos, those not really into photography, that is. I get told that I “take too many photos.” They don’t understand that doing it the way you did above, as I’d do, a subject head on, from the right angle, the left angle, distance to close up shots that you will most likely come up with what you consider the “perfect shot.” That, it takes taking all of those photos to achieve that.
About 25 years ago I went on one of those 6 days/5night cruises and used close to 25 rolls of film as compared to others just using about one or two rolls of film on the cruise. I’m so happy to use a digital camera now a days to accomplish same and not have the expenses of having the film processed, etc.
I do some touching up on the photos occassionally and the touched up or cropped photos become spin-off photos. Such as the original might be # 6, with color adjusted being 6A and cropped being 6C. If I do both to a photo, it will become 6AC, and, those who see my photo numbers here in NJ, I tell them that the “AC” doesn’t stand for “Atlantic City.” LOL. So, in Adobe PhotoShop where the photos are stored on my hard drive, I’ll have photos #6, 6A, 6C and 6AC, all from one photo, so, I even expand filling up my digital card and even have more photos to choose from. I even mark them reduced sizes if I do so for any special reason, such as 6AC4X6, etc. Was doing that for putting photos in PictureTrail. Now use Flickr in place of same. There’s plenty that can be done in Adobe PhotoShop, too, and other similar programs. Even making color changes on the photos too. That is, from the ones I like the best of all of the photos I’d take to fill up the card.
I sort of learned about colages in Flicker and have been going beyond what they have to offer, using Microsoft PowerPoint for same. I use these for submitting to a local newspaper. They’re space savers and I’m able to put more of my photos to use that way, too. It’s also fun picking and choosing photos for them, too. Check out my Flickr site to see what I’ve done with some of them at http://www.Flickr.com/Oceanpeg using both Flickr and PowerPoint for same.
I’ve came a long way since the first day I started snapping off game action photos of the kids playing foot ball in elementary school about 30 years age, and have had plenty of fun in doing same now-a-days.
When NJ Governor Corzine came to town when he was running for that position, I ran off well over 3 dozen photos while he paced the floor while he was talking to the people. I zoomed in, zoomed out, took them from different positions, right, left, head on, etc. Being a former sports photographer in the past, I was also able to follow him as he paced the floor, always on the move most of the time. He wasn’t used to seeing me behind the camera snapping off all of those photos which may have made him a wee bit nervous, but, when he came to a picnic a year later and spotted me taking photos, he, our NJ Governor and a candidate running for office waved to me. That photo is on Flickr, too. I took close to 400 photos of the people attending the picnic and of our NJ Governor walking through the crowd of 600 or so folks that attended the picnic and him giving a short speech. All in just a few hours time, with close to 100 photos per hour….. That was more than one per minute…….. Thanks to digital photography…..
I use the “Automatic” mode on my digital camera, even though it has the manual setting like I use to use in years past when doing sports photography, etc. because I can make adjustments on the computer with my photos.