Tanya, i am a nature photographer and i consider 20% hit rate quite acceptable for filling in stock. very few of my rejects are outright bad photos. they tend to be the ones of the kind where something went wrong and i left the camera in the wrong setting or such. the 80% that doesn't make it more or less because i decided they were only OK and not as good as i wanted. most of my non-photographer friends would like to be able to shoot as well as my rejects, but i know that because i am selling to a stock photography market, my standards have to be higher. it has to be more than good exposure, it has to be perfect exposure, so when i shoot film, i bracket 1/2 stop on Provia and 1/3 stop on Velvia. sharpness has to be very high most of the time, but luckily i shoot f11 and and smaller most of the time anyway. exceptions of course when i choose selective focus or out of focus entirely. some of the differences are trivial differences in composition but one feels better than the others in the set. it boils down for me to shooting the best i can all the time and choosing not to accept more than 20% pretty much no matter how good the rejects are. out of this 20%, i choose about 1/4 to print and put into my portfolio and fine art display.
aiming to make every shot count is needless stress. allowing the B&G to see the shots at the same time as you do make it more stressful. someone bumps you and you take a picture of your foot. do they really need to see that or hear your explanation? even if you are giving them everything, prints and negatives, what if the processing screws up? you had better know first and not at the same time as they do. Herb.... ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tanya Mayer Photography" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2003 12:58 AM Subject: Re: Just one tip > Bill said:"Tanya, that is bullshit. What it means is that you shoot an extra > couple of rolls of film on any given job to get the number of hits you > need," > > - that is exactly what I *do* do now Bill, it sucks though, cause I really > wish that I could be confident that I could open the package straight from > the lab and know that it would be ok if my client was sitting over my > shoulder looking at them as I was, and not feel that I need to "hide" any > from them...
