William Robb wrote:
If you are not analyzing every single frame that you shoot, and discovering
why a picture works or not, and quantifying the reasons, you are shooting
too much.
If all you do is pull up a directory of thumbnails and go through them,
sending the ones you don't like to digital purgatory, and plucking the
juicy gobbets out of the mess, you are not teaching yourself to see.
What you are is the photographic equivalent of a terrorist bomber, not
caring what you hit, as long as you hit something from time to time.
I agree, in part. I think the longer you've been doing it though, the
quicker you get at it. There's a certain percentage that plain hoover and I
can see those immediately. Yeah, it was a snapshot and a haphazard attempt
to begin with, so I don't spend much time on analysis. Then there's another
percentage that I must have just been more enthralled by the overall scene
in context, than by what the lens transmitted to the recording media. I
chalk those up to boyish excitement or using the wrong lens. Sometimes
these may benefit by some cropping.
Overall I don't think I learn *alot* by analyzing my failures in-depth,
unless I have the ability to go back and retake the same shot which I
usually don't.
My biggest failure is not doing the analysis of the scene properly at
capture time. Usually, I did not stop and think WHY DO I WANT TO TAKE A
PHOTO OF THIS? WHAT EXCITES ME ABOUT THE SUBJECT? WHY WAS MY EYE DRAWN TO
IT? WHERE ARE THE SHADOWS AND HIGHLIGHTS? When one does that and correctly
identifies those elements, one can determine how to best emphasize those
elements in the frame.
So overall I agree, I just try to force myself to do more analysis on the
front end as opposed to the back end.
Tom C.
- Re: Have digital cameras made us better photographers... Tom C
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