Rumor has it: Good Practice in Photography
New photographers may think taking many pictures is good practice, but is it the case?
Rumor Story
This article is about the best rumor that I have ever heard in photography industry: Someone paid for a photographer approximately ten thousand US dollars to do photo shooting. The project was about photo shooting his working day. However, the photographer could only use one disposable camera for the whole photo shooting project. The photographer ending up doing an amazing job, and this person was very impressed and happy with the result.
This rumor story brings an important yet interesting point. Realistically, this happened only few years ago. Many photographers use digital cameras for professional photo shooting nowadays. Compared to traditional film roll cameras, digital cameras are powerful and less expensive tools for professional photographers. We can feel incredibly thrifty and impressed by the digital image effect. However, digital camera is only one of the tools for producing amazing pictures. Without good experience and skill of photo shooting, the digital cameras can still take bad pictures, and the pictures can still be unimpressive.
Taking Many Pictures then Selecting the Good Ones — Good Practice?
Personally, I think there is an unhealthy practice in digital photography industry. New digital photographers tend to have photo shooting by taking thousand pictures because one digital image cost almost nothing, compared to traditional film roll cameras. However, this cannot be the case when the photographers use disposable cameras because the numbers of picture taking are very limited.
While this wealthy person requested to use disposable camera, he may realize that many new photographers lack of experience of using disposable cameras (Someone of them may have never used disposable cameras). This project nevertheless needs some professional photographers who knows to take pictures with limited times and “good eyes” – which means the photographers cannot randomly take many pictures then select the good ones. Remember one disposable camera could only take 36 images? If the photographer took thousand pictures for this project, he might need (10000 / 36) = 277 disposable cameras.
My opinion: Basic Understanding or Skills
So, what is the point of this article? My point is that many new digital photographers do not have the basic understanding or skills of camera usage that good photographers should have – eye catching the object, angle, and even background setting. The new digital photographers have the idea that taking many pictures of few objects then selecting the good one is a professional practice. In fact, that is not a bad practice of being a professional photographer.
Angel Andreu , Hong Kong Portrait Photographer, agrees that new photographers should understand that taking thousand digital pictures are not the best practice. “It actually wastes time,” Angel adds, “because the photographer spends more time to select, to edit, and to process thousand pictures. As a professional photographer, we should limit our time for one project. Time is money.”
However, I am not saying that new photographers should not attempt to take couple pictures. “I often limit myself the numbers of photo taking in one project,” Angel states, “this way I can practice the things that I have learned in photo shooting.” In other words, photographers should set a limit of picture that he can take in one project in order to practice the photo taking. This requires some sort of self realization and learning.
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