Less For More

Sounds counter intuitive but stick with me on this one. I see a lot of people take hundreds of pictures at a time. But do they really need to? Unless you’re a news or sports photographer you don’t need to be trigger happy on burst mode. Excuse my bias but digital may have a lot to do with this. I only keep about half of the digital images I take which got me thinking. When I started using professional film a few years ago I had 36 frames to ‘get it right’. Then as I began using medium format that number dropped to just 16. Now try selling a camera today that can only hold 16 frames before you need to swap memory cards. It probably wouldn’t catch on. But this forces you to make every shot count. It forces you to look at the intended image in every possible way before you release that shutter and expose an unfortunately finite length of film. It forces you to think and be creative. Many times I have trekked out with the camera at some nocturnal hour in the morning only to come back empty handed. If the light wasn’t right or I simply just didn’t find the image that I was after, I won’t just click away and hope for the best. The upside of being this selective is that is gives you a much better idea of what does make a good picture so that when you do find one you’ll know just what to do.