Weekly Poll: What percentage of your shots do you consider "keepers"?

[Nicole]

Ooooh, look a poll with more than 2 choices this week

There have been some questions this week about when you can consider yourself a photographer and whether you shoot in automatic or manual modes, and those kind of brought the idea that perhaps this question could be brought up again.

How many of your shots from a usual photography session do you consider to be keepers?

Do you think that you get more or less keepers as you photograph longer?

Simple as that Now, let's hear from you.

Edit: Let's consider keepers more than just the shots you don't delete, and instead consider keepers the shots that you think are worth saving and possibly showing to someone.

[smc1377]

Technically, I keep just about every shot I take so I'm in the 75-100% range. But that's only cause I'm too lazy to go back and erase the ones I don't like.

[Nicole]

lol ok, perhaps I should define keepers as "the ones you would actually want to show people" (otherwise I'm just as guilty of keeping every shot due to laziness )

[Jamesc359]

This is a pretty difficult thing to answer. Sometimes I'll take a few (relative to most photographers) shots, but normally they have only slight variations (again relatively). Sometimes that's a slight change in perspective, exposure, or position of the object. When I'm done I then pick the best. That's the keeper, the rest would only subtract from it.

But at the same time, had I not taken that particular shot, most likely the second best would have been the keeper in its stead. And often the second, third and even fourth best come so very close to being the best. Thus it's hard for me to say only ??% of my shots are keepers, because the majority of them are still worthy of keeping, and even showing to people. They're just not the best, nor the one that I will show people.

That said in the end I opted for 11-25% because that's about the percent of shots that end up being the best of my keepers.

[Rajah Sulayman]

This was a tough call. I answered 51-75%, but it's really much closer to 51% than 75%. And even then, of that 51+% that I keep, there are maybe only 10% that I'm truly proud of. Not that the rest are bad by any means, just that it's usually only maybe 5-10% of my total number of shots that I say "Boy, I really lke that one."

[Sandie]

How many of your shots from a usual photography session do you consider to be keepers?
I picked the 11-25% range, but I think it is part of how I shoot. I will also take pretty much the exact photo many times with only slight variations. It is a habit I developed when shooting film. As a matter of fact my 1st photo teacher told me one-two 'keepers' per roll of 25 was a 'very good' percentage. I think with digital my percentages are higher for two reasons...one the histogram (now that I know how to use it) and two seeing the image right away to if I 'got it'. But I know I am not at 25% (that is one out of four...I am no where near that, but one out of 8-9 is probably about right)

Do you think that you get more or less keepers as you photograph longer? I get less because I try more things, I push myself and the camera more, I take more learning curve shots, and when I can take 100 pictures in less than 10 minutes....that leaves room for lots more 'crap' that I learn something from, but would never show.

[Marmalade]

I picked 11-25% (a little cuz I'm lazy- and should delete more than I do) But I usually only like 5-10%. I like most other photographers am way to critical of my own work.

[wulf]

11-25%... but I only keep such a relatively high proportion of my shots because some of them are still for memories rather than photographic excellence.

Wulf

[Nicole]

My vote this week is going in the 26-50% category I think. I will often take 100 shots and come back with about 25-30 that I want to process, sometimes it's more photos and less keepers, sometimes it's the reverse, but overall, I'd say it's somewhere in the low range of the 26-50 category.

As far as how it's changed with time, I think that it's stayed somewhat the same, but my idea of what's a keeper has changed Depending on the "task" the number of shots may be lower (for example, smoke shots... the keeper ratio isn't nearly as high... more like 1/50). But if I go on the overall view of things, I think that it's slightly increased from when I started because I've actually learned how to plan my shots and execute them the way that I want to (rather than depending on the auto mode )

[the_camera_poser]

As in to show someone? LOL Man, I'd be lucky to be happy with .5% of my shots- seriously! I'm just learning, and I'll take 1000 shots in a weekend, family and weather permitting, and like 3-4 at best. But I'm pretty critical of my work, and would consider a keeper something that makes me go WOW- I did that- COOL!