collage of wall photographs
There has been an ongoing debate in photography for a long time now. It centers around how many images someone should capture. Now some people argue that if you know what you are doing you can take very few images and get it right. Others argue that you need to take loads of images to cover yourself. Well I think that both extreme approaches have their flaws. If you take too few photographs you run the risk of not really covering an event or portrait session. Whenever people are involved in a photograph you run the risk of shut eyes, wide open mouths, weird expressions, or just plain disaster. Even though it may have looked fine to you through the viewfinder when you pressed the shutter button, because of the lag between your brain, finger, and camera, you may not have captured the moment that you thought you did. You can read more about this in my post ‘Capturing Moments, That’s Our Job as Photographers.’ On the other end of the scale are the ‘spray and pray’ group. These are people who are taking way too many images because they lack confidence or they just plain lack technique. You do not want to be one of these lame photographers. These are the people who just take loads of images hoping that a few of them will be good. At events this can get annoying to the guests as you are constantly sticking a camera in their face or have that crazy flash going off every second like it was some Hollywood red carpet premiere.
Being a wedding photographer, and dealing mostly in a photojournalistic style, I need to cover certain key aspects of the ceremony and reception. I have to have coverage and I cannot be afraid to take a bunch of frames. I am also custom designing the wedding albums for my clients, so I need extra images to use in the design. These extras can be used as accent images or as parts of backgrounds. By being involved in the album design process I can better appreciate the need for these ‘extra’ shots. Since I am not posing people much I need to have more coverage because of the human face expression problems that I mentioned before. If I were a portrait photographer in the studio, or doing more formal portraits at the wedding, then I would not expose as many frames as I do now. In highly controlled situations you can photograph less. In fact, if you have done your homework, set up your lighting properly, and metered it, you should be able to get a good image in a few tries. When I used to be a commercial location photographer I took many environmental type portraits. Lots of these were with CEOs and they rarely gave you more then a few minutes to work. These types of situations taught me the value of being prepared, setting up way ahead of time, testing your lighting with a stand-in, and making sure that all of your equipment was functioning properly. That way when the CEO or celebrity walks in you are in control and look very professional. You place the subject and take your photographs. The whole photographing process may take a few minutes.
In the film days there was much more incentive to photograph less because it cost you money every time you pushed the shutter. Now, in the digital age, taking more images does not have that financial burden. Negating the two extremes that I mentioned above, I still think that the average photographer that I see, and most of my photography students, are not taking enough images. This goes to the end of coverage, but more so, it leads to a lack of practice. So the more images that you take with skill, the more you will learn, and the more familiar you become with situations. This is a great way of developing your photographic intuition which I talked about in my recent post, ‘Developing Your Photography Intuition.’ Everyone will have to find their own comfort level, but don’t let the post-processing component slow you down.
Gary Miller
Houston Fine Art Wedding Photographer
Eye Candy and Brain Veggies
Related posts:
One Trackback
[...] from scratch. I have spoken before about the film versus digital realms in posts like ‘You’re Not Taking Enough Photographs‘ and ‘The Visceral Nature of FIlm.’ So I am familiar with change and I am [...]