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- 2002 Honda S2000
hehe... that's the difference between a "photographer" and "some one who happens to have a camera."
Any photographers in here?
- Thread starter ChopstickHero
- Start date
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- 2002 Honda S2000
indeed, the age of digital photography is great for that.
but you see, sonny, back when i started taking photographs........
but you see, sonny, back when i started taking photographs........
there's that old saying.... cameras take photographs, but photographers make photographs
taking a million pictures and hoping for a good one is a big waste of time if you haven't learned anything after taking the scene type/subject matter a few times
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oh you do?
don't diss the nikon fm2 pal
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mountjonas
Member
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- 2013 VRM MS3
sold the subaru today and immediately ordered the canon 10-22. can't wait.
FlyinHawaiian
Member
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- Mazdaspeed Protege #1460
there's that old saying.... cameras take photographs, but photographers make photographs
taking a million pictures and hoping for a good one is a big waste of time if you haven't learned anything after taking the scene type/subject matter a few times
I disagree. Usually at an airshow I'll take about 200 photos, but maybe 10% are worth actually processing and publishing/sharing. For me, I prefer to show only the best, and whether it be a race or an airshow, it takes a lot of shots to get the best. Its way to hard to catch THE moment in one shot. While I do fire on continuous mode, I generally know where I need to start and stop shooting and rarely shoot more than 5 or 6 in one go.
On the other hand, set shots (non-moving subjects mostly) should only take 2 or 3 shots to get the one you want. I'll usually take 2 of each framing/angle/composition etc, just in-case I didn't get it the first time. Despite the fact they're of the same thing, most times one's better than the other...
The thing is, not pertaining to action shots or things of that nature, you need to be able to capture the picture you want to take in your head before you ever look through the camera.
If you cannot see the shot before it happens then you will never get it. Just taking pictures of anything and everything is a waste of time and you will never learn.
You have to be able to pick out specific things and develop that image in your head before you take it. When ever I go out taking pictures I see everything in a rectangle and do my best to see the outcome of the picture before I ever hit the shutter.
Sometimes I get something unexpected or the picture doesn't come out like I expected, but then I recompose or tweak until I get the picture I want. You have to be able to know what you want to get before you get it. If any of that makes sense.
I have learned a TON TON from Ken Rockwell. Google him and read some of his How-to's....That man is brilliant!!!! True story.
If you cannot see the shot before it happens then you will never get it. Just taking pictures of anything and everything is a waste of time and you will never learn.
You have to be able to pick out specific things and develop that image in your head before you take it. When ever I go out taking pictures I see everything in a rectangle and do my best to see the outcome of the picture before I ever hit the shutter.
Sometimes I get something unexpected or the picture doesn't come out like I expected, but then I recompose or tweak until I get the picture I want. You have to be able to know what you want to get before you get it. If any of that makes sense.
I have learned a TON TON from Ken Rockwell. Google him and read some of his How-to's....That man is brilliant!!!! True story.
mountjonas
Member
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- 2013 VRM MS3
That's how I do things. Sold a 66 mustang, bought the 24-70 f2.8.
I disagree. You're shooting from the hip not knowing what you want the image to be prior to taking it. I see this all the time at the track, specifically drifting events. I see people firing off 4-10 shots as each car goes by. By the end of the day, they will have well over 2000 images on the track alone, plus whatever is taken in the pit area. I'll take 200 shots from the track and end up using about 165 of them, filtering out the ones I deem as not worth the time to process either because 1) out of focus, 2) having several other similar images, 3) random photographer stepping in front of image
#1 & #2 I have control over and these are things, with experience, lower the amount of images I take at an event. #3 sometimes can't be avoided
When I'm taking photos of static objects, my keeper rate is about 95-97%. I know exactly what I want and how it'll turn out before I take the shot. I'm not going to waste my time taking several shots and figuring out later which I like better. Most events, I'm in and out within 2 hours, which includes time spent talking to random people.
FlyinHawaiian
Member
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- Mazdaspeed Protege #1460
I'll put it to you this way - maybe a 25-33% of my photos have to get edited out due to just not a good photo, but I only feel 10% are TOP-NOTCH. Yes, I am shooting from the hip a little, but as judman said, I have a pretty good idea of what I want to get, for action shots, its more of a matter of getting 3 or 4 good shots, and 1 (maybe 2) GREAT shots...
I'm pretty anal about what I show to people (though I know its not nearly as good as most of the guys in here) but that's only the cream off the top...
What can I say, I'm a n00b
FunkyBuddha
Tuned by Slick Nick
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- 2003 Spicy Orange MSP
I agree about having the picture in mind before you hit the camera. Even before I take out my camera, I know what kind of shot I want and a vague idea of how to get it. Can't just "aimlessly" point and shoot. It reduces the amount of post work, and time. And time, as we all know, is money.
As for models, it's a bit different. I know what I want the photo composition to be, but the lighting and the technical aspects are more left to the unknown and subject more to experimentation. THe good thing is, with each model/person I shoot, I get better and I start to know the right camera settings etc etc.
It's all repetition for me. So the more I shoot, the more I experiment, the better I can do it next time. Reaching a certain level of consistency is one of my main focus now.
I was not addressing action shots at all. That is a completely different ballgame (phun intended). I have shot quite a hit of high school and college level sporting events and it is really hard to get quality pictures. I may go to a basketball game shoot 200 "action" picture and only get 5 I would put out for publishing. Half of that is due to my lack of proper equipment and the other half is just my lack of experience. Then there is always the element of surprise. As Gr? said sometimes you just can't help things happening, but that doesn't count lol
I have been holding a camera for as long as I can remember and have but about 12k shots though my year old D80 and I know there is so much more I can learn and improve on!!
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- 2002 Honda S2000
wow! well, you are either the best photographer the world has ever seen or your idea of a "keeper" is different than most of us. as others have mentioned, i'm on board with the area of 10% myself. for top-notch, cream of the crop type of shots this has been the standard for me in all the years that i have been shooting. sure, i can get a high percentage of "good" shots in a session, but few that i would use to represent my photography to the public.
If you haven't seen more images, here are the most recent:
http://tunerzine.com/view_coverage/show_coverage/audi-forza-axf-24-challenge
I had an idea of the types of shots I wanted before arriving at the location. Upon arrival, I made my introductions to the key people, browsed the area, and started taking photos at 11 am, leaving at 1:30 pm. I would've left sooner but I had to wait 20 minutes until they did their pit stop demonstration.
The only image I didn't get that I wanted was a shot of the contestants heckling each other, which none of them did while I was there.
I've lost count on how many photos I've taken over the last 12 years. I'm not bragging, not boasting, whatever you want to call it. It's experience. Once you've taken enough shots, you know what settings to use, you know how to frame it, and you want the shot will look like without having to chimp every photo. It's knowing your gear, knowing your lighting, and knowing what settings to use based upon the available light and gear. Experience will tell me that when I'm using a circular polarizer shooting at 2 PM on a sunny day, outdoors, using my 430EX with a FEC setting at +2/3, shooting a white vehicle at 16mm at f/5.6 ISO 100, on a full frame body, my shutter speed will be around 1/640. Why do I know this? Because I've taken 2000-3000 similar shots to this.
It's all about discipline. With digital, most don't have the discipline to learn the simple basics, such as looking at a histogram on the first few shots of the day. With digital, people have the habit of pray N spray, hoping a few good, usable shots are in the hundreds of photos.
For those who learn photography on film, we learn to make every shot count. With digital, there is no real cost involved other than the initial cost of the memory card.
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- 2002 Honda S2000
checked out your link. i definitely appreciate the quality of your work and your experience as a photographer. if those were my images i would edit out well over 50% of them. there are a lot of sections where you have 3-6 almost identical shots in a row. just a slightly different composition or angle. in my mind i pick the highest quality shot that best exemplifies the object/person/scene and ditch the rest. perhaps we just have different ideas about what a "keeper" is. as opposed to presenting 97% of the shots i take in a session, i pick and choose the images that are of the highest quality and/or best reflect the essential elements of the environment or subject.
I'm still a relative n00b when it comes to photography, so I hope I don't overstep my bounds.....
I'll have to agree with you though... half of the pics I see on gr?'s page are redundant... I only entered the realm of DSLRs a few months ago but in just a month's time I went from taking too many pics and rejecting so many of them to finally getting it down to just taking one shot or a few of one particular subject... I agree that it's all about learning what composition works best and obviously settings matter a lot... I gotten composition down for the most part and I'm just working on learning settings now
I'm a fast learner, but I'm NOT a total n00b at photography or SLRs... I dabled with the FM2 since I was a kid, and used an F801s whenever I could for a long time (and gotten a good idea of how to use the speedlight with it well indoors... I gotten some damn good pics of my cousin's wedding a few years ago)... I definitely will go back and play with these once I gotten a good idea of what works and what doesn't on my D90 instead of wasting film (and money)... like you, I try to take pics as if I'm still on film, because that's where I started... it's hard sometimes to step over the line and just take "backups"/extras because it's now all digital
not to be bragging, and only my peers can tell me if it's true or not... but when I was in china, there was a professional photographer that was part of the tour group and he gave me props at what/how I was taking pics... so it's a positive start at least!
I'll have to agree with you though... half of the pics I see on gr?'s page are redundant... I only entered the realm of DSLRs a few months ago but in just a month's time I went from taking too many pics and rejecting so many of them to finally getting it down to just taking one shot or a few of one particular subject... I agree that it's all about learning what composition works best and obviously settings matter a lot... I gotten composition down for the most part and I'm just working on learning settings now
I'm a fast learner, but I'm NOT a total n00b at photography or SLRs... I dabled with the FM2 since I was a kid, and used an F801s whenever I could for a long time (and gotten a good idea of how to use the speedlight with it well indoors... I gotten some damn good pics of my cousin's wedding a few years ago)... I definitely will go back and play with these once I gotten a good idea of what works and what doesn't on my D90 instead of wasting film (and money)... like you, I try to take pics as if I'm still on film, because that's where I started... it's hard sometimes to step over the line and just take "backups"/extras because it's now all digital
not to be bragging, and only my peers can tell me if it's true or not... but when I was in china, there was a professional photographer that was part of the tour group and he gave me props at what/how I was taking pics... so it's a positive start at least!
