Natural Selection

abraxas · Mar 13, 2008

How selective are you?

What shots were you ready to take, and then walked away from? Why?

JerryPH · Mar 13, 2008

I am selective, but rarely walk away from a pic. If I do it is becuase the "moment" is passed and I missed the shot.

Shooting digital, I can snap away as much as I want and it costs me nothing more if I shoot 100 or 150 shots.

My selectiveness, if you will, comes into play afterwards. I delete a lot of pics, but at the moment I shoot, my goal is to get that shot... decide later.

Thats a luxury that film users did not have and likely why they were inherently better photographers. They knew everytime they hit that shutter, it meant $, so they took more pains to be sure they got what they wanted.

I love digital on that basis alone... it permits me to be mediocre at times, and still have nice pictures... lol

Miaow · Mar 13, 2008

I find sometimes i'll line a shot up and then think gee this will probably end up boring or maybe the light isnt exactly the way i'd like it at the time etc so i don't end up taking it. I also delete a lot of pics afterwards if they haven't worked out how i want them or if i think they're a bit boring as well.

Phranquey · Mar 13, 2008

I'm pretty much in camp with Jerry. I rarely pass up a picture. If I see something I like, I will take pictures from different perspectives, angles, DOF, EV's, and then decide in post whether or not to keep them. There have been quite a few times where I will be taking a picture, thinking.."I'll probably delete this, but"....and then that will wind up being my favorite picture of the bunch.

plentygood · Mar 13, 2008

When I still owned a camera, I saw several great candid-possibilities downtown, but I would always wimp out instead of raising the camera to snap the person. Then I'd say to myself, "Ok, next time I'm definately going to just do it," and then I'd wimp out again. I'm just too shy for candids.

rob91 · Mar 13, 2008

Last night I was going to do my grocery shopping and arrived just after a pedestrian had been hit by a car - he was hurt, badly. There was a van up on the curb and a crowd of people around. I immediately thought of whether or not I would take a picture of this. I didn't have a camera, but it was an easy choice, even if I did have it, no, there is no way I would have taken pictures and I realized, partially, what kind of photographer I want to be.

I know there are people who would have taken pics, and maybe in a slightly different context I would have, ie where photographing such tragedy might be more important.

JamesFrier · Mar 13, 2008

Thanks to digital memory (I agree with the above) I would shoot anything I think is worth it. That way I can decide afterwards if that shot was a good 'moment'. The advents of technology allow for some unprecedented abilities to find those exact photos.