Shooting seriously for about eight months. A three hour walk gives me maybe 300 frames and two I actually like. It feels wasteful and I cannot tell whether it means I am shooting too much, culling too harshly, or whether this is simply what the process looks like for everyone.
That is an ordinary hit rate and for plenty of good photographers it is worse. What matters is whether this month's two are better than last month's two, not the ratio. One thing I would change: look at the other 298 for patterns instead of deleting them. Are they all from the first hour? All at one focal length? All missing a foreground? The rejects are the only free feedback you get, and going through them once a month taught me more than any tutorial.
I keep a near-miss folder and revisit it every few months. About one in ten turns out to be fine and I was simply tired the day I culled.
Reviewing the rejects deliberately never occurred to me. That is a good habit.
Do a second pass a week later. My immediate cull is biased toward whatever I was excited about on the day, and the frames that survive a week are more reliably the good ones.
Eight months in, two keepers per outing is fine. The unfun answer is that the ratio does not really improve, the keepers just get better.
@sightread_sid · last mo. · 2 replies
Shooting less might improve the ratio and will definitely improve the pictures. When I made myself take 40 frames on a walk instead of 300 I started thinking before pressing the shutter, which is where the two good ones were coming from anyway.
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@dax_darian · last mo.
This works brilliantly for some people and paralyses others. Worth trying for a few walks to find out which you are.
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