TonyP Loc: New Zealand

Nearly 60 years ago when I was learning how to take photos, my boss said to me, "think like are a hunter".
"Aim carefully at the subject, take aim and make sure you hit what you are aiming at". Or words to that affect.
Back then my sport was deer stalking, pig hunting and walking around the bush most weekends.
My boss was also overseeing my apprenticeship (he owned the studio) and was paying for the film.
In those days, a professional was hoping to make every shot count, because every shot cost money.

In my view, 'digital' has done no favours in creating great photographers like those that had studios or brought the news photographs from wars and other theatres back in those days. They were photographers who knew the value of considering every aspect of the shot, foreground, subject and background. They also knew they probably only one chance to get the shot.

Many, so called 'great' photographs today, are not made by great photographers. They are made by someone who machine guns the subject with 5, 10, 15 rapid shots hoping to get a good one. And its just happenstance that one of those 'shots' may capture a memorable image.
Suddenly, that shooter becomes a great photographer.

I think perhaps you could evaluate your ambition in regards to photography.
Do you want to just record the moment for posterity on your digital camera or even perhaps a phone?
Or do you want to make a photograph that captures exactly what you want to preserve and become something to be proud of? Perhaps even a piece of art.

I still have the 2 Leica M3 cameras and all the lenses from 'back in the day'. We have them displayed on our hall table. Among them is my first Lumix LX100 which I've kept as a backup to the LX10011 that I use now.
Amazing where photography has progressed.
I'm too lazy to go back to film but in my opinion, that was photography when the photographer really had to think before pushing the shutter release.

Ive been taking photographs with a digital camera for about 20? years I suppose. My first digital camera was a Nikon D71 (?) I think. Since then I tend to have my camera with me whenever we leave home and at least once a week I take a photo, or two.
Having said that, I have about 18000 photos saved on my computer. Not many when you take 6000 on one summer holiday.

Lukabulla

You must put your self in this mindset ..
You have been given an assignment by Time Magazine for quality photos ..
they want everything that you have shot on the day but must be limited to 50 in total ..

Then before you take the shot , ask yourself the question ' Is this good enough for Time ' ?
You will find yourself taking more High quality images and much less waste .

nison777 Loc: illinois u.s.a.

Thank you...
The discipline learned from shooting film is priceless...
Quality over unsure quality...

Lukabulla

yes .. when one only had 3 rolls of film for the whole summer .

Doyle Thomas Loc: Vancouver Washington ~ USA

back in the day National Geographic Photographers on assignment would shoot 5000-6000 images per day. there were several reasons. NG provided all film and developing, the raw film was sent to NG whos editors would cherry pick what they wanted and sent the rest back to the Photographer for their own use, and, most importantly, people would get used to seeing this person shooting frame after frame and start ignoring the crazy guy and that's when you start getting the good Photographs.

Tjohn Loc: Inverness, FL formerly Arivaca, AZ

Sometimes one just has to shoot, but that is not that often. Force yourself to think about each shot before shooting. Is it expressing what you want to say, am I getting a good composition, how does it feel, can I do it differently? There are plenty of questions and plans, spend a little time thinking.
When it was film, it got too expensive to just go shooting everything, particularly 120 and larger.

Stephan G

When I was more agile, in my "younger years", I would go out hunting with a particular story in mind. Like so many, I did hunger for that perfect shot, to the point that I kept forgetting about the "story". I ended up with the proverbial "too many" photographs. To me, photography is like writing. Writing a story. The work frame of having a beginning, a middle, and an end. I have found that by applying the same criteria in writing to how I photograph, I began to focus on the idea of how I was going about in seeing what I was photographing in the environment. I even adopted the method of "letting the one that was getting away go away". A term I used above, "focus" has so many iterations. Yet it is the same in so many ways. I, for one, focus on the story I am "retelling" with my photography.

GAS496 Loc: Arizona

I am posting this just as a comparison for what most all of you do. Knowing some of you have shot large format before this reply is really for those that have not. I shoot almost exclusively with an 8x10 large format camera. Don’t even own a digital camera (besides an iPhone). My subjects hold still. No birds or bees for me.

I have a threshold for taking a photograph; is it worthy of hanging on the wall? If the answer is no I pass. If the answer is yes then the process begins. A lot of effort goes into producing each negative which costs $6.80 per sheet of Ilford, Tri-X is double that. But the decision to shoot an image is more about the effort of getting the camera out, putting it together essentially, getting under the dark cloth for framing the scene and focusing, using a light meter to determine exposure, making the lens adjustments, putting the film holder in the camera, exposing the film and then taking it all apart and putting it safely back in its backpack (which ways about 55 pounds). I recently got a smaller 4x5 camera for those hikes more than three miles; it’s backpack only weighs 25 pounds. I just got my Medicare card and don’t want to endure those long hikes with the 8x10 setup anymore.

I can be gone for a week to Death Valley or Southern Utah and come home with ten to fifteen of sheets exposed. Then comes the labor of mixing the chemicals and developing the film in the proper temperature water while you have your fingers crossed you got the exposure and composition correct in camera. If you did and it’s what you wanted then it is on to printing the image on paper. I am fortunate enough to have a darkroom with an 8x10 DeVere enlarger and all that goes with it right down to a mat cutter. But the best part is I have a wife who leaves me alone when in there!

I can work on an image for over a week or a month even to get it just right. It is certainly a labor of love. It comes down to this; each photograph is precious. Seeing an image of mine hanging on someone’s wall is what it is all about to me. Just last month a large format photographer friend sent me an image of a photo of mine hanging between a John Sexton and Lynn Radeka print on his living room wall. The ultimate compliment.

AFPhoto Loc: Jamestown, RI, USA

I often think that i overshoot. So this discussion holds great interested for me. I use Photo Mechanic to view my RAW images. I store all of my RAW images on remote hard drives ( three copies from each shoot - I am a belt and suspenders type) so from Photo Mechanic reading from the camera card I erase any gross errors such as camera pointing at ground and shooting. Then I “ingest” the remaining photos onto two hard drives into files named with date and location. I remove the camera card and then fire up Lightroom Classic to import the Raw files from the primary hard drive. Now the culling begins. First pass through is the focus/sharpness. I look at each at the 1:1 and if not sharp I hit Delete(removed from Lightroom file). Next comes the difficult round. “Does this photo accomplish what i thought it would when i took it?” . Finally, with the burst mode that I often use, I will eliminate all but one from the burst using the side by side comparison tool. At the end of all of this my Lightroom Classic file has been reduced in size but all of the original RAW files are still in tact on the Remote disks. Now I can format the card back in the camera and go out and shoot again. What I learned recently - that I have mot been doing- is that this is the time to add key words.

AZNikon Loc: Mesa, AZ

I'd like to try this program. What's the workflow? Do you have to save the files to disc first? How do you cull first before importing into LR?

ELNikkor

I rarely use "Continuous", only for some sports action, or birds taking off, and then only short bursts at 6fps. Cutting down on the "FPS" can give you less to go through.

Photojournal

I’ve always enjoyed reading your responses! Would love to hear your workflow, software used etc in culling your photos.

GAS496 Loc: Arizona

What do you folks do with all these image files? Do many get printed and hung on a wall? Or a digital frame maybe? What is the percentage of images taken to printed do you think? My film ratio is about 10:1.

jcboy3

That is not the question. The question is, are you putting thought into the pictures or just snapping away. Are you trying different things, or do your pictures basically all look the same. Do you really enjoy the act of taking a picture? The answers will tell you whether you shoot too much.

Of course, no one needs 6000 pictures of England. You can either stop taking so many pictures, become efficient at culling, or wind up drowning in pictures making it hard to find the good ones later.

I always go for culling:

Figure out how many pictures you want. Suppose it's a dozen for each significant place you visited, a couple for each insignificant place you visited.

Delete until you get there.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

I have asked that before.
No good response yet for those 100K photos on a drive somewhere backed up 5-6 times.