What's Your Keeper : Discard Ratio?

[Daniel81]

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You capture hundreds if not thousand of images - and certainly FAR more in the digital age than in the film age.  Do you have a good sense of how many discarded images you shoot for every gem you keep?  Do you have a high bar?  Does that ratio change depending on the subject domain (portraits, landscape, action, street, nature, objects)?  Does that ratio differ depending on brand (Leica, Nikon, Fuji, etc)?  I find I in a typical outing, I may shoot one or two hundred images and when I get home, pour a cup of tea, load them into Lightroom and contemplate my 'catch for the day', its not unusual for me to find there may be only 3 or 4 or maybe 6 or 7 real keepers.  But it does vary highly depending on the nature of the subject.  People see my best shots and say 'wow, you are such a good photographer', but they don't know for every gem, I have often discarded a LOT.  Does being a 'good photographer' include the skill of discernment, filtering and selection?  In these 'social media times', I find people often just mass post all their images and don't take seriously (it seems to me) the art of discernment, posting only the images truly worthy of sharing. What do you think?

Edited January 23, 2020 by Daniel81

[Donzo98]

I'm a low volume shooter... so my edit/keeper rate is pretty high.

I was just away on vacation for 8 days... to a place I have been many times. Probably took 100 or so pics.... and 70ish are edited. I took 4 cameras... Panasonic S1, Q2, Canon G7XII, Mavic 2 Pro Drone  Also I had my phone...

I used the S1 for one sunset plus a few shots on one day.

I used the Q2 for one AM breakfast with my kids.

Drone... zero use. Too windy.

Iphone... a bunch

Canon G7XII got like 90% of the usage... why?? Went to Aruba... a windy, beach place. Didn't want to use my good cameras in the sand and wind.

Here are 3 of my S1 + 75 SL pics...

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Edited January 23, 2020 by Donzo98

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[andyturk]

Looking at 11 years of stats in my Lightroom library, only one out 400 images is "worthy". That includes my early attempts when pretty much everything was crap. Maybe 1 in 250 more recently?

[snooper]

I get down to 6% "rated" (from * to *****) in LR... 

[FlashGordonPhotography]

I don't know exactly. For personal work, maybe 1 in 300 or so. I tend to shoot a lot with digital. I like to work a subject which you can do with digital. It's play time. So I play.

I normally keep all the shots of my kids, so 100% keeper rate.

For work it's probably 50% deleivered.

Gordon

[thighslapper]

The problem with this question is that the 'assessment' of images varies with genre, time and place.

As my Landscape photography has progressed the bar has been set ever higher. Images I thought were great several years ago I now regard as crap. I now have ridiculously high standards.

As a result I am now in the sorry position where I regard almost all of what is posted here and elsewhere of minimal artistic merit and only reluctantly post images, as even I don't feel they are really worthy of sharing. There is very little that is original and both technically/compositionally worth a second look.... and unsurprisingly it's usually from the same people. They probably have just as miserable a time as I do with regard to their assessment of their photographic output. 

I spent last week in the Lake District shooting from before dawn till after dusk and have 1000 or so images (which is a lot for most landscape photographers) and the first cut has produced a couple of dozen worth serious processing. I'll probably be happy with half of them and after a bit of reflection half of those, and by next year half again. I have 3 or 4 longish trips a year, so that starts to get close to Ansell Adams' oft quoted '12 good images a year '.

I'll be sending a handful off to 'Landscape Photographer of the Year ' in a few weeks. I'd be delighted if any are shortlisted and astonished if any are commended. You need an immense amount of legwork, luck and proficiency in both composition and processing to come remotely close to the best in the field. 

I'm afraid the internet is suffering from photographic diarrhoea ..... and I would agree with Daniel's implied suggestion that 'Good Photographers don't post Crap', but there again that depends on what the original posters motivation was in the first place .... .  

Edited January 24, 2020 by thighslapper

[Daniel81]

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Thank you for that commentary!!  Though I am sure our details are likely very different, I concur with the theme of your described trajectory completely!!  Lately, I have the experience of going out and shooting one or two hundred images - being all excited about what I think I have captured, only to find in Lightroom that I am lucky if one or two or three images give me any deep satisfaction.  Incidentally (and I am completely new to Leica - with a recently purchased SL), I find the Viewfinder on the SL is ridiculously seductive in how it renders an image - that it repeatedly gets me overexcited about something I later find in Lightroom to be quite unremarkable.

Edited January 23, 2020 by Daniel81

[david strachan]

I wish...

Reckon if i got 20 large printables a year, I'd be happy. More like 2-3 images.

But i partly do photography just for the fun and relaxation..not always striving for a competition winner. Just fun to "get out" and look at the world a different way.

...

[Guest BlackBarn]

I am not sure why everybody is beating themselves up in response to this question. What I am reading about ‘failures’ is what I would expect from anyone developing a craft regardless of discipline. Photography isn’t easy, it needs tons of ‘not so good’  photographs to develop the ‘eye’, technical skill and critical judgement.  Continually ‘trying’ has always been the engine of acquiring a  craft and ‘failure’ has always been its fuel.

[andyturk]

So what is meant by "discard" or "keep" here? For my workflow, I actually keep every almost every exposure regardless of merit. Storage space is cheap, and often I'll import a batch of images so I can clean off the card, but not actually look at them until later. I.e., I'm not making many judgements when simply importing stuff into Lightroom. I've never used the LCD to decide whether an image is a keeper or not and the only frames I delete in the camera are times when the shutter got pressed for some other purpose (e.g., to make sure the flash is firing).

To me, a "keeper" isn't just an image that gets archived, but one I really like and intend to share somehow.

... @Artin

20% "keepers" seems like a really high success ratio. How many total frames do you shoot in a year?

Edited January 24, 2020 by andyturk

[LikameLeica]

I read somewhere one time that a typical ratio is 10:4:1.  10 pictures, 4 keepers and 1 really good picture.

For me, if I focused on the failure rate (which for me is about 65%) I would have stopped taking picture a long time ago.  Each time I fail, I learn something new and through this failure I have success about 35% of the time.  However, real success, the best of the best is about 1% of the time.  These are the pictures that keep me truly inspired.  

Photography to me is all about the journey, learning through failing, the continued pursuit of growth, the constant seeking of improvement, the challenge of finding that decisive moment that only happens that one time in that split second.  It's all about finding that 1% and not giving up.  

Photography to me is all about taking action.  Preparing, reading, and researching locations (taking action), acquiring the right equipment for the type of photography (taking action), actually getting out and taking pictures (taking action), actually pressing the shutter (taking action), reviewing/deleting and editing your pictures (taking action), sharing and printing your pictures (taking action).

Are you taking action?  Are you failing enough in the pursuit of your 1%?

[LeicaR10]

Daniel81,  Two quotes from 2 world renowned photographers come to mind:  1st:  "Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst" - Henri Cartier-Bresson and a 2nd quote during a workshop with Ansel Adams telling Andy Baer;  "If one gets 5-10 good photographs a year, it is a good crop".  I find Ansel's comment to be the most relevant based on my experience and landscape photography work for my clients.  Other photographers results may vary.  r/ Mark

[jaapv]

I don't want to think about it. I was bad on film - keeping only one or two out of a roll -except for common house and garden  & holiday/pet  snaps, which I take and keep for memory's sake, but I have become much, much worse on digital. I did my yearly data disk backup last weekend: 3.4 TB, CCC took 36 hours using USB2...🥴

[caissa]

Digital is much worse than film. It costs nothing, so it does not count at all. So I do not count them at all.   From infinity -1 that were shot I keep only very few (not enough walls). (No I keep many more, but do not print them. I stack them to look back when I am really old and cannot leave the house anymore and all people close to me are dead.)   (Even a bad photo can be a valuable memory. Most of my valuable photos are actually bad, taken many years (up to 5 decades) ago on cheap cameras. Usually the dearest photos are taken by other people.)

Edited January 24, 2020 by caissa

[scott kirkpatrick]

In a week on the Faeroes last year I see that I took 1000 exposures, and posted 125 of them in my Flickr album.  That's a target-rich environment, and it feels like I posted a greater fraction than usual.  But when I check a recent event (can't leave out anybody's work) I see that I posted 37 photos from just over 100 exposures.  If I go out and just shoot for myself in an area that is familiar, I probably shoot 20 or more frames and come back with one or two to share.

My viewing threshold is definitely lower than thighslapper's.  I'll look at anything that I haven't seen before, or that has a story to tell.  I'm certainly not looking for perfection in composition or in processing.

Edited January 24, 2020 by scott kirkpatrick

[jankap]

I keep 90 out of 600 to 900 from a voyage of one week. Mostly expert guided tours, so I have not so much time to consider.

The amount of 90 is, because that fills a photo book! Sony APS camera with M, R and Voigtländer lenses.

Edited January 24, 2020 by jankap

[Per P.]

I typically select 20-25% from, say, a week of travels for editing. No matter the amount of pictures made I then select the 15-20 best as a concise story. If I have been away longer, or been to a particularly photogenic location then I may create more than one set. But then they will either present different locations or tell different stories.

From the non-digital times I remember a top German travel photographer, Reinhard Eisele, telling a story of how hard it was to select 150 photos out of 15'000 made for a book. So 1% of true Selects stayed with me as a good target. 

[Viv]

I keep all that I take.

I process about ten percent. I don't consider the other ninety percent to be failures.

I print, display and share about five percent.

I am a low-volume shooter, having learned with film. On a typical day's outing, I might shoot ten images.

[pedaes]

Just now, Viv said:

I keep all that I take.

I process about ten percent. I don't consider the other ninety percent to be failures.

I print, display and share about five percent.

I am a low-volume shooter, having learned with film. On a typical day's outing, I might shoot ten images.

+1. I do not take enough not too!

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[LocalHero1953]

As single images, to be looked at as single images, I would keep about a third, of which perhaps 1 in 100 I am very happy with. I estimate this from the trouble I have finding images I want to put on our wall at home. I spent a week in the Shetlands in the summer, and took towards a thousand shots of, broadly, 'landscape'. I've picked just four to go on a wall in our living room.

But that's just a simplistic analysis. Someone here said they kept every shot of their family; if you're taking your camera for a holiday in a memorable place, you're likely to keep a higher proportion for the memory. If you're trying to tell a story or make a documentary, it's quite possible than none of your shots, considered individually, would warrant a place on your wall, on its own; but placed in a sequence with text or captions, or in a book, they make sense.

Do a google image search for Robert Frank 'The Americans', Alec Soth 'Sleeping by the Mississippi' or almost any other classic contemporary photobook. How many of those shots, individually, would you call a 5-star keeper?