I used to work with a old guy named Steve in a camera shop. He wouldn't mind me calling him an old guy since that's what he was and he was a straight shooter. I remember calling him "Steve-O" once when I first started which turned out to be a mistake. He stared at me and told me to come closer. "I like you," he said under bushy, scrutinizing eyebrows, "but don't ever call me that." He turned and walked away.
The reason I bring up Steve is because he functioned as a photography sage for me, a keeper of secrets and an ancient knowledge (or something like that). During the day, the shop only ever saw a handful of customers who were equipped with binders full of CNET reviews, so during that time I picked at Steve's brain.
Steve trained under "Wedding Masters", people who dedicated years of their lives to perfecting the art of wedding photography. He asked me once how many images I shot at a wedding. Being a newbie, I told him that I averaged about 2,000 photos (my camera could shoot 9 frames per second). His eyes grew large and I knew I was at the mercy of Mister Miyagi.
He didn't berate me, he just drove a knife into my soul as he told me about his first days shooting weddings: they took 25 exposures, and brought an extra roll just in case they missed an image. His point wasn't that I should take 25 photos at my weddings, but that I should pay more attention to my art instead of blindly shooting thousands of frames so that I could have a low yield of acceptable photographs.
It's so easy to click away thousands of frames because, unlike film, there's no cost! Or, is there?
I would argue that there are some potential drawbacks to the endless shooting:
- We focus less on the specific image and frame and click wildly hoping to get a decent shot. If no decent photo appears, we pick the one that is best out of the 36 frames where Joey is blowing out the birthday candles.
- You lose a lot of disc space. All those images take up a LOT of room.
- You loose time. Up front, it might feel like you're breezing through a family portrait session, but in the end you have to weed through all those photos!
