Shooting Often To Avoid Disappointment

An all too common experience when photographing is to not find anything worth shooting, or worse, to shoot anyway, knowing you aren't getting anything really good and somehow deluding yourself into believing that magic will happen after the image is recorded. Of course it doesn't and you look at the proofs and sigh - all that work for nothing.

I was just reading a 'despatch' by David Noton talking about going out on a lovely morning yet not finding anything really worth it.

The obvious suddenly occurred to me - the only way to avoid major letdown is to photograph so often that a single day's shooting isn't all that important.

If you are like me in the past, photographing every few weeks when I finally had a day free - there was a lot riding on that one day working out. I had previously thought my success with digital had to do with shooting more images - but I think perhaps it had a lot more to do with getting out more.

I also note in David's 'despatch' that he shot anyway, he worked the scenes hard and tried his best - I suspect this kind of 'practice' is vitally important.

It's still a disappointment not to capture one of the 'great' images on a given day, but it sure beats staying home and cleaning out the gutters.

The image above was a stump in a front lawn noticed as I was walking the dog half a dozen houses away. It's a pleasant enough image but not 'top drawer' and other than as an illustration of a point, I wouldn't show it. If it's not a keeper, why shoot it? Well, my 'eye' was active, looking for compositions and textures and shapes that are interesting - that exercise is always worth while, the process of shooting the image (actually moving round the stump looking for the strongest composition) is useful. The actual process of recording the image isn't that important but producing a well toned rich print is...