Percentage of quality shots
May 18, 2019 21:08:51 #
My question for everyone on here is this. Out of all the shots you take what is the percentage that you would consider displaying on a wall in your home for anyone to see? Not that I take a lot of pictures but out of what I have taken, I find very few that would be worthy of displaying. My girlfriend thinks a number of my shots are beautiful but I disagree. Then again, I am a very harsh critic of my photography and can always find something wrong.
May 18, 2019 21:14:36 #
My keeper rate is around 3% based on editing / culling this week from an original count of nearly 2500 images. Willing to actually print and frame any of these is probably half this amount. I only keep what is good and unique, so it takes some fortitude to delete otherwise good images that are too similar to other images taken of the same subject. Rather than printing, get a digital frame and just keep adding your good stuff onto the SD card and let it run 24x7.
May 18, 2019 21:18:21 #
Tino wrote:
My question for everyone on here is this. Out of all the shots you take what is the percentage that you would consider displaying on a wall in your home for anyone to see? Not that I take a lot of pictures but out of what I have taken, I find very few that would be worthy of displaying. My girlfriend thinks a number of my shots are beautiful but I disagree. Then again, I am a very harsh critic of my photography and can always find something wrong.
About 99% of an average 3,500 pictures I take each week.
May 18, 2019 21:22:07 #
Lets assume the longer you shot the better you get. That said the less keepers you acquire means less wall hangers. If I get a 10 or so Great shots a year I'd be happy. I keep maybe 10% of the shots I take. It has to be at least as good as my last shots or hopefully better for anyone specific subject. Then I always go back and delete as I add to my collection of photographs.
May 18, 2019 21:24:27 #
Tino wrote:
My question for everyone on here is this. Out of all the shots you take what is the percentage that you would consider displaying on a wall in your home for anyone to see? Not that I take a lot of pictures but out of what I have taken, I find very few that would be worthy of displaying. My girlfriend thinks a number of my shots are beautiful but I disagree. Then again, I am a very harsh critic of my photography and can always find something wrong.
5% maybe?
Mike
May 18, 2019 21:26:48 #
As long as your girlfriend knows you think she is beautiful all is good in your world. 
You asked for a percentage, what is your percentage?
After discarding the duplicates from holding the shutter release down to long. my true wall hangers ready to be framed would be at most about 3-5%. Worth keeping as an 8*6 print, about 15-20%. Another 15-20% reside on the hard drives in hope they will get better with age.
The most fun I have in photography is seeing something that urges me to press the shutter. Everything after that is secondary.
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You asked for a percentage, what is your percentage?
After discarding the duplicates from holding the shutter release down to long. my true wall hangers ready to be framed would be at most about 3-5%. Worth keeping as an 8*6 print, about 15-20%. Another 15-20% reside on the hard drives in hope they will get better with age.
The most fun I have in photography is seeing something that urges me to press the shutter. Everything after that is secondary.
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May 18, 2019 21:30:23 #
May 18, 2019 21:37:42 #
martinfisherphoto wrote:
Lets assume the longer you shot the better you get. That said the less keepers you acquire means less wall hangers. If I get a 10 or so Great shots a year I'd be happy. I keep maybe 10% of the shots I take. It has to be at least as good as my last shots or hopefully better for anyone specific subject. Then I always go back and delete as I add to my collection of photographs.
In agreement with this idea, I'd argue that your work should get better with more practice, but at the same time, your keeper rate should go down. I've had reason to go through some older folders from about 10 years ago. There maybe is some good stuff in there, but my first action is to delete all the inferior and duplicates that should have been deleted all those years ago. To our OP: as your shooting and culling skills improve, your own minimum threshold of a 'keeper' should move higher and higher.
May 18, 2019 21:43:57 #
May 18, 2019 21:54:04 #
Tino wrote:
My question for everyone on here is this. Out of all the shots you take what is the percentage that you would consider displaying on a wall in your home for anyone to see? Not that I take a lot of pictures but out of what I have taken, I find very few that would be worthy of displaying. My girlfriend thinks a number of my shots are beautiful but I disagree. Then again, I am a very harsh critic of my photography and can always find something wrong.
You think you may be too hard on yourself, but, it could be worse. There's a fellow named Joel Sartore who has been shooting for Nat Geo for over 20 yrs. In one of his videos he mentions that the magazine uses one shot out of about every thousand he takes!
May 18, 2019 22:14:05 #
For display? Maybe 1 or 2 %. How many do I think are OK maybe 5% Been doing this for over 50 years. Maybe 1 day I will actually learn how
May 18, 2019 22:14:52 #
Ahhh ... Aren't we all our own harshest critic, Tino. Welcome aboard.
It is really easy to find something wrong with our own work - if we shot a keeper every time we clicked the shutter, we would stop trying to be better "the next time". One of the Hoggers, here, has a quote by Thomas Edison in his signature, that I'll try to paraphrase: "I haven't failed. I've just learned a thousand ways that won't work".
But, I'll tell ya, you really should listen to someone else, and get/trust their opinion. I'm sure that when your girlfriend thinks more highly of one of your shots than you do, she is probably right. Don't just look at the shot on the screen - make a 5x7 or 8x10 print, tape it to a wall, and just l-o-o-k at it for a little while. In fact, *both* of you look at it, and let her tell you what *she* likes about it. She may see something that you have completely missed, and she probably won't know that you're a quarter of a stop off, that you really wanted to use a different focal length lens, or that some other interesting item is just outside your framing.
Nothing is probably more helpful than the opinion of someone else who you trust to be honest with you. My other half has sometimes selected shots I wasn't happy with for some reason, and they have done very well for me - and sometimes the ones I thought were "the cat's a**", are languishing in the back of a bin.
Good Luck!
Tony
It is really easy to find something wrong with our own work - if we shot a keeper every time we clicked the shutter, we would stop trying to be better "the next time". One of the Hoggers, here, has a quote by Thomas Edison in his signature, that I'll try to paraphrase: "I haven't failed. I've just learned a thousand ways that won't work".
But, I'll tell ya, you really should listen to someone else, and get/trust their opinion. I'm sure that when your girlfriend thinks more highly of one of your shots than you do, she is probably right. Don't just look at the shot on the screen - make a 5x7 or 8x10 print, tape it to a wall, and just l-o-o-k at it for a little while. In fact, *both* of you look at it, and let her tell you what *she* likes about it. She may see something that you have completely missed, and she probably won't know that you're a quarter of a stop off, that you really wanted to use a different focal length lens, or that some other interesting item is just outside your framing.
Nothing is probably more helpful than the opinion of someone else who you trust to be honest with you. My other half has sometimes selected shots I wasn't happy with for some reason, and they have done very well for me - and sometimes the ones I thought were "the cat's a**", are languishing in the back of a bin.
Good Luck!
Tony
May 18, 2019 22:29:00 #
CHG_CANON wrote:
In agreement with this idea, I'd argue that your w... (show quote)
Yes. This.
As your skills increase, your standards also rise. I would say my “print rate” has been steady at about ten percent over my fifty years as a hobbyist and occasional pro.
There is an exception though. Since moving to digital for wildlife and sports, I shoot more and keep fewer in those situations. Thanks to higher frame rates and free pixels, I shot a couple hundred exposures at my grandson’s baseball game today. I haven’t viewed and culled yet, but from frequent chimping, I think I may have a half dozen worthy of printing. Maybe twice that number that I’ll share with family and friends on social media.
Andy
May 18, 2019 23:17:01 #
Tino wrote:
My question for everyone on here is this. Out of all the shots you take what is the percentage that you would consider displaying on a wall in your home for anyone to see? Not that I take a lot of pictures but out of what I have taken, I find very few that would be worthy of displaying. My girlfriend thinks a number of my shots are beautiful but I disagree. Then again, I am a very harsh critic of my photography and can always find something wrong.
My keeper rate has changed significantly over the years. When I shot film, my keeper rate may have been as high as 3 to 10%. With digital I know it is probably 1% or even less. The difference is the cost per shot. In digital, I can take a lot of photos, different exposures, different compositions, etc., for no cost. When I went out with film, I typically used 36 exposure rolls of film. Film was several dollars per roll, and processing was more. With digital taking photo has not cost except for my time to select and post process them (which can be significant).
As a result, my keeper rate is probably less than 1%. Now that number is based of what I have put on a micro stock web site (and been accepted) verses what I have taken. Since, as an amateur, I take many photos of subjects that are of interest to me (family, kids, grandkids, and great grandkids, that have no value to anyone but me and my family.
Now, if I was taking photos professionally, if I was taking portraits, if I was in the mode of taking photos with the intent of selling, I suspect my "keeper rate" would be higher!
May 18, 2019 23:42:34 #
martinfisherphoto wrote:
Lets assume the longer you shot the better you get. That said the less keepers you acquire means less wall hangers. If I get a 10 or so Great shots a year I'd be happy. I keep maybe 10% of the shots I take. It has to be at least as good as my last shots or hopefully better for anyone specific subject. Then I always go back and delete as I add to my collection of photographs.
We might have to define "wall hangers." I haven't printed a photo in over a decades, but I have a few billion photos on USB drives cycling through on 11 42-65" smart TV's hanging on the walls. I don't watch TV on them but they are on 24/7 so that there are always photos playing in any room one walks into.
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