More shooting, less editing

[Derrel]

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh steve and tony ......Gods in their own minds, kings of the intetwebs....by all means continue to throw away 90% of your shots. It's only digital right? Spray and pray, by all means, continue... there are other teachers of photography, and this is completely counter-productive, this being the spray and pray technique.

 

[Strodav]

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh steve and tony ......Gods in their own minds, kings of the intetwebs....by all means continue to throw away 90% of your shots. It's only digital right? Spray and pray, by all means, continue... there are other teachers of photography, and this is completely counter-productive, this being the spray and pray technique.

Did I miss your best selling photography books and 10s of thousands followers?

 

[Derrel]

I used to shoot Sports for two area newspapers... the goal is to capture the peak of action which typically occurs in about one tenth of one second... shooting for 90% of the crap time does not make sense to me. If you cannot get what you want in three frames,then you are wasting exposures and really not paying much attention to precisely when the critical point is. For example, when a blue heron grabs a fish I would estimate that that takes one tenth of one second completely, from initial movement to capture the fish, to the bird coming upright again... a Finish Line shot is about one tenth of a second in which four or five athletes are all leaning for the string that marks the finish line. There is not much point in shooting 15 frames when you really want only _one_ frame. In the high jump even at 10 frames per second there is only one or two frames in which the athlete is clearing the bar. Actually, let's see it as it really is :
There is only _one_peak of action in almost every sports or Wildlife situation. You have been counciled by people who depend upon shooting 10 frames per second for 10 to 30 frames? Seriously, and I mean this with all respect, perhaps you should read about shooting techniques by top sport shooters like Dave Black, or by the hundreds of working professionals at sportsshooter.com. the idea is to anticipate the action to shoot three or four shots,not 10 to 30.

 

[Derrel]

Did I miss your best selling photography books ad 10s of thousands followers?

Jim Jones had nine hundred followers, and almost all of them drank the Kool- Aid..

According to 1 million plus house flies, the best food in the world is rotten meat. And by rotting meat ,I mean feces. There are loads of people who have lots of followers. I'm not a follower. Tony Northrup spouts some of the most outlandish BS, and his wife and him are clickbait experts. Among many, his reputation is that of a clickbait conman, and a weak mind, technically and practically speaking, but he sounds like he knows what he's talking about, so many people follow his dumb advice. He is handsome and he makes clear and simple videos , and he is very engaging but he is prone to simplification and also to over-simplification. Instead of being technically accurate oh, he has a habit of being how can I put it ? Full of b******* is how I would describe it, but only three or four times a year. As I said, perhaps you ought to get yourself over to sportsshooter.Com where you will learn about trigger control as opposed to blindly mashing on your shutter button and hoping for the best... peak of action versus spray and pray... a long-time topic of discussion, and you are taking advice from one YouTuber, which is contrary to the advice of hundreds of thousands of actual working Sports and nature photographers... oh Tony Northrup, yes he does have a lot of YouTube followers.

This discussion has been going on since before you or I were born. Apparently you have been told to do something that most serious sports shooters do not do. You are hoping that the camera Fires at the right time. One tenth of one second is actually a fairly slow time. I used to be able to start and stop my stopwatch in .06 .07 of a second. Your own brain is faster than your camera that fires that Fires at 10 frames per second. What I am telling you to do it standard practice among people like me who used to be sent out to shoot for money covering Sports assignments. You could probably do much better if you started to rely on your own brain and eyes and shorten your burst down from 30 frames to three or four at most. Seriously. If you would truly like to improve your hit rate, then you need to follow best practices, not what you have been told by so-called internet YouTubers, who are experts at getting clicks, and at attracting viewership. Like I said, head your self over to Dave Black's website, or to Sportsshooter.Com.... start taking advice from actual working photographers and not from YouTube video channel owners- start learning from people who get paid money to go out and make photos everyday, not by people like Tony who are experts at getting clicks on YouTube. My advice would be to _take_advice instead of being such a stubborn know-it-all. I don't blame you though, since your teachers are great self-promoters, and you apparently have no idea of how the rest of the photography World views people like Tony Northrup.

Seriously, your own brain can make decisions much faster than your camera can fire. At 10 frames per second you can.easily miss peak of action. Try capturing bat on ball by machine-gunning. You will most likely fail if you depend upon the camera firing at one tenth of a second intervals, when the action takes perhaps two-100ths of a second . You are far better off to hone your timing and shoot one frame at each swing of the bat not 10 or 15 or 20 or 30 frames. If you want to do a sequence, then yes you need to shoot more than three frames, but if you're looking for the singular shot, even ten frames per second is not fast enough.

Apparently you equate numbers of followers with soundness of advice. How many followers does Kim Kardashian have on Instagram? How many followers does Katy Perry have on Instagram? Does follower count automatically mean that a person knows what they're talking about? Remember, Jim Jones had nine hundred followers, and all of them thought he was a god. They drank the Kool-Aid, and ended up Dead and Bloated in the Sun. I would advise you to be careful who you take advice from. Tony Northrup has been on YouTube for several years now, and has gotten himself in some hot water making ridiculous statements that were roundly criticized by people who actually understand photography. Like I told you, this discussion has been settled years ago. If you wish to spray and pray ,as you apparently like to do, then it would behoove you to look into mirrorless cameras with electronic shutters and 30 frames per second firing... 10 frames per second ... it's actually fairly slow if you hope to go through and cherry pick machine gunned bursts.

 

[Dacaur]

It's not so much that 90% of pictures turn out bad and only 10% are worth keeping. The actual "bad" pictures may be less than 10%, but do I really need 5 great pictures? Nope, I just need one, do I pick the best and delete the rest. After decades of "well, this picture of the moon/a deer/ sunset etc is "pretty good", guess I'll keep it, you end up with thousands of mediocre images that your mom would tell you are great, but anyone else would think "why did you save that?"
Back in my film days I found for every 20-30 pictures I took, I was truly happy with 2-3 of them when they came back from the developer. These days with digital I go out and rather than taking 2-3 rolls of film, I will take hundred of digital images. Keeping them all would be ridiculous storage-wise. I've decided to only keep what I think are exceptional pictures. I've already re-thought the way I take pictures....

 

[SquarePeg]

It's not so much that 90% of pictures turn out bad and only 10% are worth keeping. The actual "bad" pictures may be less than 10%, but do I really need 5 great pictures? Nope, I just need one, do I pick the best and delete the rest. After decades of "well, this picture of the moon/a deer/ sunset etc is "pretty good", guess I'll keep it, you end up with thousands of mediocre images that your mom would tell you are great, but anyone else would think "why did you save that?"
Back in my film days I found for every 20-30 pictures I took, I was truly happy with 2-3 of them when they came back from the developer. These days with digital I go out and rather than taking 2-3 rolls of film, I will take hundred of digital images. Keeping them all would be ridiculous storage-wise. I've decided to only keep what I think are exceptional pictures. I've already re-thought the way I take pictures....

This is similar to my approach lately. Exceptions being family and vacation photos, if it’s not a wall hanger or something spectacular that I’m going to use in some way, I don’t keep it. I may upload it to Flickr and my Amazon drive if it’s worth sharing here or on Instagram but then I delete the files. The only difference is that I never delete anything in camera, I always download the card, and cull on my tablet or computer. Then I reformat the card once I have what I want backed up. For example I took hundreds of photos last weekend and only about 10 will make the final cut. Currently they’re all on my iPad while I whittle them down to the best of each subject. Once I’ve got one or two good looks of each scene, the rest will be deleted. I’ve also cut back on the number of photos I’ll take, no need for 4 or 5 of the same thing. Maybe one extra for exposure range or to ensure I nailed the focus...

 

[Timppa]

I do have to admit I have been following northrup as well, and he does makes things clear in a way.
But maybe thats the reason why I am never fully happy with my pics .
I would kind of like a fellow photographer to grab pictures together in real life and learn from eachother, but I have yet to find one xD.

I do like the spray technique, but I also realized that you break your shutter a lot faster and you will probably need to replace your camera faster.
So I try to turn it down a notch when I feel comfortable.
And I also delete a lot of pictures before I actually edit the remainings.

And what I also am trying to say before is that I do sometimes like my jpegs, but I know whatever comes out of my RAW, will be beter then the JPEG, so I tend to edit more often
I need to be less picky, more happy with wat I got.
And if I sound unclear, English is not my native language and I do tend to be all over the place sometimes

 

[Strodav]

I do have to admit I have been following northrup as well, and he does makes things clear in a way.
But maybe thats the reason why I am never fully happy with my pics .
I would kind of like a fellow photographer to grab pictures together in real life and learn from eachother, but I have yet to find one xD.

I do like the spray technique, but I also realized that you break your shutter a lot faster and you will probably need to replace your camera faster.
So I try to turn it down a notch when I feel comfortable.
And I also delete a lot of pictures before I actually edit the remainings.

And what I also am trying to say before is that I do sometimes like my jpegs, but I know whatever comes out of my RAW, will be beter then the JPEG, so I tend to edit more often
I need to be less picky, more happy with wat I got.
And if I sound unclear, English is not my native language and I do tend to be all over the place sometimes

Your English is excellent. Getting feedback on your photographs is important. Do you have a local photo club? That is a great place to meet with other photographers, share work, and go on shoots together. Posting your shots online like on Facebook "Stunning Digital Photography Readers" can be hit or miss. Sometimes you will get good feedback, other times not. There are a couple of good forums on the UglyHedgehog.com website that provide good constructive critiques.

As far as camera life goes, my Nikons are rated at about 250,000 clicks before needing to be rebuilt. By the time I get to that many clicks, I usually want a newer model camera anyway.

I usually shoot raw + jpg as I can post jpgs quickly even from the shooting location, but like you, I can always get better results in Lightroom and Photoshop.

 

[ebyelyakov]

Editing does not mean you need to go overboard (like it happens to me way too often) and basic WB, clarity/saturation and selective adjustments will surely result in much better editing compared to the camera's internal algorithm. Considering batch processing, you process will speed up even more.
One extremely positive thing about having to process, is the investment of time. That, for me personally, forces myself to be VERY selective in my culling -- if I kept 10% of what I shot, I did not cull well enough. And well, thinking more about picking up the camera or not when I know I won't be able to take a good shot. At the end of the day I can produce 1000 images walking with my girls at the park, keeping adding yet another 1000 every day, adding more and more hard disks to my NAS... But do I truly need 7000 images a week? Considering time is precious and space on walls is even less available?

 

[viathelens]

Hi!

I have a bit of a dilemma.
I am not a big fan of editing all my pictures after taking them.
I like to shoot more and be less behind the computer.
But I know that shooting in RAW and editing is so much better then just shooting in jpeg.

My pictures start to pile up for editing and I don't feel like working with them, even though i love the images.

I don't mind cropping a bit, remove a spot or changing shadows and highlights, but anything after that just feels like a drag.
And if I use a preset, It never gets an ideal result right away, always need to tweak more.

What could I do to edit less/faster and be more in the field taking actual pictures?
I wish jpegs were so good I didn't had to do anything xD
Or are there any great presets out there that I don't know? I currently just use some I made myself.
The biggest problem I would say with me is getting the white balance great, dealing with noise and getting great colors.

Should I try other editing software? I have been thinking to try the Nikon software

Thanks!

Hi. I shoot in RAW and love to edit. I can edit my images very quickly at times, depending on my goal. I use Copy-Paste and/or Previous in LR and it cuts editing time way down. There are, however, some images I do want to work with more. I have a system of defining the ones I want to look at and perhaps work with and I use that marking system first. I will also delete anything that is obviously bad. Then I quickly run through the marked images, most often at 100%, and work on what I believe to be the best of the lot. I have processed over 10,000 images using this system and I often will have a couple of thousand images when I photograph wildlife. Having a well-defined system and knowing your software fully is the way to quickly edit images. Here is one example I did recently that took only a few minutes:

 

[StevenW]

I think it all begins with the taking of the photographs in the first place. It is so very easy to overshoot and then be left with a backlog of images. We have so much inexpensive and reusable storage for pictures we tend to forget about the back end of the work. When we had physical film it served as sort of a governor we had a known limit of exposures per roll, and each of those rolls cost money to purchase then each exposure had an expense in processing, proofing, and finally printing. The cost today is in the editing, post-production and is calculated in time rather than directly in monetary terms. Of course, our time is truly more valuable than the money formerly spend on film and processing but that realization doesn't come to light until we have a gigs worth of files we no longer have a love for.

I think overall photographers have shot themselves in the foot where technology is concerned. The things that should have made taking 120 wedding pictures or 15 poses in a portrait session faster and simpler turned into overwhelming numbers of image files. I'm not sure we are ever going back to a place where photographers crafted a limited number of thought out well executed exposures then finished them. Instead of making life easy through technology we have created mountains of work that turns into drudgery. We should take fewer, better shots and be satisfied with something then move on. Picking the perfect micro expression change, struggling over a few degrees of angle change in a subject after firing off a few machine gunned frames is a joy kill.

There is the paradox of too many choices. Photographers have long known that giving a client too many choices leads to anxiety that leads to indecision and unnecessary stress. This same thing holds true when photographers are working with too many images. Even when the images are not similar we want to narrow down to a workable end number. We get that end number not at the end of the process but rather at the beginning.

 

[AlanKlein]

Editing does not mean you need to go overboard (like it happens to me way too often) and basic WB, clarity/saturation and selective adjustments will surely result in much better editing compared to the camera's internal algorithm. Considering batch processing, you process will speed up even more.
One extremely positive thing about having to process, is the investment of time. That, for me personally, forces myself to be VERY selective in my culling -- if I kept 10% of what I shot, I did not cull well enough. And well, thinking more about picking up the camera or not when I know I won't be able to take a good shot. At the end of the day I can produce 1000 images walking with my girls at the park, keeping adding yet another 1000 every day, adding more and more hard disks to my NAS... But do I truly need 7000 images a week? Considering time is precious and space on walls is even less available?

How does anyone find the time just to look at that many images?

 

[DanOstergren]

I sympathize with you 100%. In most cases it's a necessary evil, and the most we can do is work to improve our skill with the craft of photography so that we can avoid having to edit our photos. Before you take the photo, scan the scene for the things that you know you would have to edit afterwards and do what you can to minimize and remove them from the scene. Honestly I would love to hire a retoucher so I don't have to do any of it, but I'm still working towards being able to factor that into my rates.

 

[ebyelyakov]

How does anyone find the time just to look at that many images?

I don't So cull without mercy

 

[Original katomi]

Read so many long posts here my brain hurts.
So just two short ish thoughts
Hit rate.
Go out watch sport, or whatever interest you and really watch it. Then start to imagen you have a camera in your hand which will only do one shot at a time. Follow the action and pick the moment to take the one shot.
Train your mind , hand and eyes to follow and capture that moment you are looking for.

Culling
We each have our own method, but if your hit rate increases from 1 in 10 you will find there is less to cull
Bit short bit brutal, I know.

Back in my days of film I used to put down the 35mm camera and use the med format camera at only 12 frames on the film it used to slow me down and make me think
Well that’s my 5 eights worth.