Travel photography and great shots/total shots

[mav3r1ck]

Hi all!
Just want to drop this question to the forum and see if I am the only one experiencing this, and how others have dealt with it.

A very short foreword: I got my first film reflex when I was 8, have started shooting in digital when I was 14 or so with a compact advanced camera, got my first digital reflex when I was 22, been a loyal Nikon user sticking to my D90 for the next 6-7 years and in the last 3 years I moved to mirrorless.

Nowadays I mostly shoot when travelling. What I noticed in the last years is that I tend to shoot much more than in the past, with much less quality. Interestingly, it is not that - say - in the past I was getting 10 great pics out of 200 and now 10 out of 400. I doubt I even get a comparable amount of pictures I really like even if I shoot considerably more (to give you an idea 16 days in South America 1500 pics in total, now post producing ca 250 out of whic I guess I’ll like 35-45)

Am I alone in this disease? I don’t think it is the digital/ zero cost effect as this started much later than my migration to digital

How do you guys deal with it?

Thanks!

 

[dunfly]

Slow down! This is the problem with digital, particularly with travel photography. Since digital is so cheap compared to film, it is easy to fall in the trap of firing away without slowing down to analyze the scene. I find myself doing it all the time and have to make myself slow down and work it. Also, with travel photography, you don't always have the time to really work a scene, so you have to analyze it quickly and plan your shots. It is hard to do this when you know you can machine gun a scene and hope for the best. I get the best shots when I limit myself to just a few. So, yes I have the disease, I just have to work to overcome it.

 

[tirediron]

There's also the issue of experience. The longer you do this, the more discriminating you become, and what might have been a keeper five years ago no longer makes the grade.

 

[Braineack]

Travel photography is very opportunistic. I'm much more fond of the shots I plan out -- time of day, crowd size, etc matters.

I'm never really satisfied with my images when I come home, so I challenge myself to try to take time for myself just to shoot and not vacation. I recently went to one of the most beautiful places in the world, and even hired a local photographer to take me around the best spots on the island and I'm still thoroughly disappointed. It's really hard to juggle "soak up the experience' with "come home w/ magazine quality shots".

One thing the guide did really help with was a workflow for shooting in this situation that I'll probably always use going forward.

tl;dr if you want to bring home better photos, take more time focused purely on your photography.

 

[ac12]

As @Braineack said opportunistic. If you are on a tour, you can't stop and wait/setup for a shot, you have to move with the tour group. So you have to do your best within the time you have, so you make the best out of the situation.

Example, if you go to a viewpoint at noon, vs early morning or late afternoon, you have direct overhead sun ​

If you are on a bus or train, it won't stop to let you take a pix, you have to shoot while the bus/train is moving.

As @tirediron said, with experience we get more picky. What I thought was GOOD when I was younger is now, eh . . .

 

[480sparky]

I think too may get wrapped up in the 'keeper count'. Like somehow shooting 1000 frames and having 100 keepers is better than shooting 2000 frames and having 100 keepers. Yeah, I get it when you're a pro and your livelihood depends on cranking out sellable images. But for those who shoot for fun, or the love of the craft: Who cares how many frames you took? Now some folks may ask what camera & lens you used on a particular image, and even the shutter speed / ISO / aperture. But will ANYONE..... EVER...... ask, "So, how many times did you press the shutter button before you got this shot?"

 

[Braineack]

The most important question is: Did you shoot M?

 

[mav3r1ck]

First off: thanks everyone for so many answers and different points of view!

Agree with @tirediron and @ac12 on the fact that i might have become more picky, although if I look to shots i've taken while travelling 5-7 years ago i like the pictures that made it through the selection more than the ones i take now... that's why the thought that sparkled this discussion was: not only I shoot more, but also the top X photos are worse than when i was shooting 50% less.

This said, in reply to @480sparky: I agree that if you get 100 good pics at the end, the result is the same whether it took 1000 or 2000 shots to get there, although I have the feeling (see above) the "100" are decreasing over time Plus, given i have very limited time when back home, i would be more than happy if I had to download, select, post-produce 30-40% less pics to get to the same result (basically doing the selection before shooting...)

@Braineack yes, always shoot in M, also for this reason (force myself to think more before shooting), unless it is a convulse situation where I need to shoot rapidly (something is happening, someone is passing by etc, in that case I would go on shutter priority)

 

[480sparky]

......... although I have the feeling (see above) the "100" are decreasing over time ...........

Sounds like you're simply becoming more critical of your own work.

 

[JoeW]

As usual, I'm late to the party but rather than go away I'll pick through the remainders of the food and throw down my jello and carrots dish for whoever is left that is still sober and hungry.

1. There is a big difference between taking snapshots and composing a picture. If you're just going around snapping away, you'll get a lot of exposures but also a lot of stuff that a more experienced photographer will go "meh" at afterwards.

2. I find travel photography difficult to predict for number of exposures. When I was on a photo tour in Botswana (with other photographers and tour guides who were photographers) I was averaging 1,500 exposures per day and I was happy with most of them. OTOH, I was in Arches NP and at mid-day (overhead sun) I skipped a bunch of iconic sites (as photos) because I hated the light and how contrasty it was.

3. Without seeing you shoot, I can't accurate say what is going on. Yeah, going digital means I'm more likely to just shoot away rather than ratio my exposures because I only have two rolls of film left. So yes, digital does tend to change how you shoot. But I also have another take--if you rarely shoot (except when traveling) and if you aren't by yourself (where you can carefully set up or be patient to let the sun change position or for that lion in the shade to end his nap and eventually saunter out so you can get a good exposure) then you may be guilty of going "okay, I need to take pictures, I'm seeing cool sites, let me use my gear now!" In short, your judgment and your composition skills may be rusty because you're not using them much.

4. You may just be more critical. I know there are landscape photos I took 2-3 decades ago that I'd walk by now and not even raise my camera to then go "nah!" I've been there and shot that. Depending upon your workflow, you may decide "I'm not going to spend a week refining 500 RAW files" and instead just pick out the 10 you like best. And the way to partially answer that question is this way: do you feel your landscape results are getting better (as a result of you being pickier and composing better and having higher standards)? If not, then it's probably not that you're being more critical.

 

[crf8]

Related, but not exactly the same topic asOP. I am obviously not a pro photographer.

I take a bunch of photos with my iPhone to pick a few later for Facebook posting. I post maybe 50% after cropping and brightness adjust.
I take additional photos with my Sony mirrorless when I see something great, or it’s beyond the capability of the iPhone, such as night shots. I edit out about 50% on that camera, at a later date.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ac12]

Go do a small photo shoot in your back yard or local park, and shoot as if you were shooting film, where each shot cost you $1 or 2. And limit yourself to 36 shots, like a roll of 35mm film.
The care and attention you pay to those few shots will probably be more than what you normally do with digital, and your pictures would probably be better.

The other thing that I found out is, if I am tired or lazy, I don't LOOK for the different angles and perspectives that make a shot different. I just shoot a "good enough" shot. Looking for the different angles takes physical and mental work. I've kicked myself many times, and said, "I should have done . . ."

 

[480sparky]

Go do a small photo shoot in your back yard or local park, and shoot as if you were shooting film, where each shot cost you $1 or 2. And limit yourself to 36 shots, like a roll of 35mm film.........."

Don't stop there. Shoot with one white balance, and use filters instead of in-camera changes. Shoot JPEG on and not raw. And once you've taken your 'roll' of 36 frames, take the card out, tuck it away, and don't look at the files for a week.

 

[Grandpa Ron]

I would blame it on becoming more discriminating with experience. Add to that, in the film days you had to pick the best of the few you shot.

With digital you will always feel I could have done one better than the 42 you already took. It is human nature.

 

[AlanKlein]

When I travel, I shoot to tell a story of my trip. That includes landscape shots, people, the wife, me and the wife, me alone, jets, luggage, signs, etc. I then put it together in a slide show that I play on my UHDTV with music, narratives, titles, credits etc. Of the let's say 300 shots I use for the final show out of 1500 taken, only some are pretty good. Keep in mind, there's often not time to spend really setting up a shot without the wife nudging me on. (I do that at home when I shoot medium format film without her around). But for traveling, it's great. I think you're expecting too much. Relax and enjoy the trip. Stop looking for that Ansel Adams' moment.