On average what would you say is your success rate when you go out to shoot? And what’s your experience level?
For myself who has a passion for photography but zero formal training and only purchased my first real camera less than a year ago, I’d say 1% of the pictures that I take are “good” or at least to the point to where I’d share them.
I know a lot comes from just going out and taking pictures but I feel like the gaps between when I go out and take pictures and actually sit at the computer and look at them is so spread out that I can never remember what I did or was thinking last time I was out shooting
Depends. I shoot a ton of street and landscape. Maybe 1-2% street. But my landscapes are carefully planned and executed so I get like 20%. The thing is that, a lot of the time at least with me, I get keepers that may not be exactly what I intended when I shot it but, with a little cropage and postprocess magic turns into a keeper. When I cull I have definite keepers, maybes and nopes. I may get an extra few percent from the maybes later on…
When I first started out on film we had to be more deliberate with our shots so that made me stop and think and learn to compose and frame on the first try. I did that for ten years before going digital. Also a lot of photography is VERY subjective. Some people will hate everything you do. Others will love it all. Still others will love shots you think are sub par or absolute shit.
As a photojournalist and also corporate professional, this number varies greatly.
Shooting photojournalism you can shoot from 20-100 shots in an assignment, maybe 300 if you’re rapid firing speeches or events (not including sports) and 1-3 go with the article. But now everyone wants a dozen choices and a photo gallery, so you have to up your game and produce more. I turned in three recently and got begged for my rejects and they ended up publishing six in a magazine out like 20 fairly bad choices.
I went to Iceland and shot 3,000 photos in a week, got home and probably liked 300, but 12 went on the wall.
But then I went to Arches National Park yesterday, shot 158 pictures (50 were for a panoramic HDR to be fair) and I’ve just now produced 4 total pictures for showing off and I’m pretty sure I actually like 2 of them.
I shot an all-day event last month and had two cameras, so I shot like 6,000 because I was chasing a lot of kids around the park, getting vendors interacting, etc. and the client wanted 150 finals, including all the musicians, award winners and demonstrations, so I had to massively increase the number of shots I took to get 150 good shots.
And then shooting portraits I can do a dozen for a headshot and produce 3-5 for the client or I can shoot 200 for a session with lots of movement and outfit changes and get 25 I like but only 8 that they like.
It’s a crazy numbers game for sure. I don’t know if someone can derive a percentage out of my stats but this is kind of how it goes. But at least I can generally go in to an assignment with these intentions in mind and shoot with the goal of getting those outputs for them or myself.
The more you learn, the less successful you’ll experience. It’s a great little frustration hobby.
When shooting portraits, I would say I typically end up keeping around 10% of the photos.