Tired of your vacation photos not turning out the way you hoped? Here's the trick: take 100 photos too many.
On a recent week-long vacation I took 850 photos.
About 5 or 10 of them are winners - photos that I am really happy with.
Am I a bad photographer since 840 photos I took were only so-so? Not exactly - I just take more than one photo of every subject because I know that a slight change in light or camera position can make an ordinary photo great.
The photo in-crowd term for this is "working a subject".
Let's say you're on a hike and come across an interesting flower.
You snap one photo of it with your digital camera.
You go home and check the photo on your computer.
Turns out your one photo has a competing background that hides the flower from view.
Now let's rewind.
Same hike, same flower.
Instead of snapping one shot and moving on, you spend some time with the flower.
You photograph from a high angle and a low angle.
You circle it, taking pictures as you go.
After some time you discover that you can isolate the flower against a blue sky.
Without any background to compete with, the flower now stands out in all of its glory.
Here's the key point: it takes time to "see" a photo.
As you take more and more photos of the same subject, you see interesting angles that you didn't notice at first.
You can also experiment with camera settings like focus, depth of field and shutter speed to find the right combination that will take your photo from mundane to magical.
As time goes on and your photographic eye improves, you'll get your best shot in 2 or 3 tries rather than 10 or 20.
Can you ever take too many photos? I don't think so.
I have taken over 50,000 photos with my digital cameras and I've deleted nearly half of them, experiments gone wrong.
Even though 25,000 photos didn't work out, each one helped me to capture those stunning photos I decided to keep.
On a recent week-long vacation I took 850 photos.
About 5 or 10 of them are winners - photos that I am really happy with.
Am I a bad photographer since 840 photos I took were only so-so? Not exactly - I just take more than one photo of every subject because I know that a slight change in light or camera position can make an ordinary photo great.
The photo in-crowd term for this is "working a subject".
Let's say you're on a hike and come across an interesting flower.
You snap one photo of it with your digital camera.
You go home and check the photo on your computer.
Turns out your one photo has a competing background that hides the flower from view.
Now let's rewind.
Same hike, same flower.
Instead of snapping one shot and moving on, you spend some time with the flower.
You photograph from a high angle and a low angle.
You circle it, taking pictures as you go.
After some time you discover that you can isolate the flower against a blue sky.
Without any background to compete with, the flower now stands out in all of its glory.
Here's the key point: it takes time to "see" a photo.
As you take more and more photos of the same subject, you see interesting angles that you didn't notice at first.
You can also experiment with camera settings like focus, depth of field and shutter speed to find the right combination that will take your photo from mundane to magical.
As time goes on and your photographic eye improves, you'll get your best shot in 2 or 3 tries rather than 10 or 20.
Can you ever take too many photos? I don't think so.
I have taken over 50,000 photos with my digital cameras and I've deleted nearly half of them, experiments gone wrong.
Even though 25,000 photos didn't work out, each one helped me to capture those stunning photos I decided to keep.
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