Your first 5,000 photographs are your worst?

[lit-photography08]

This is my goal in life that I have to obtain the 5,000 photographs for me to judge myself that I am a part of the medium category in talking about photography.

Do you agree with me?

[gturner]

Absolutely, great idea... go big or go home.

[Biomech]

I always thought the saying was the first 10,000 :P But yes, plus you still get better after 20,000 :P

[homank76]

You talking about taking pictures as a kid and on up to now or when a person first got serious and realized that this is an art form.

[SwissJon]

If you press your shutter release without thinking, it doesn't matter if you've taken 200,000 photos, you can still be rubbish.

Engage brain before clicking.. THEN your photos improve.

[scootermcq]

Your first 5000 are your best... you rock... nobody is as good as you.....

Then you learn how much you still need to learn from looking at the first 5000

[kirbinster]

Some of the pictures I take today are total crap and some are just GREAT. When I first started out some of the pictures I took were pure crap and some were just GREAT. A higher percentage fall into the second category now than at the start.

[Barbara V]

Some of the pictures that I took with my Mamiya 500DL (yes it only went to 1/500th sec.shutter speed) some 35 years ago were some of my best. Haven't enjoyed my pictures as much since then! And they were my firsts.

[Krusty79]

5,000 and 10,000 are just arbitrary numbers. Everyone progresses at different rates. If you are engaging your brain before shooting, it should not take anywhere near 5000 shots to see substantial improvement.

[BryanC]

“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst" – Henri Cartier-Bresson

This is the original quote that is sometimes taken a little too literally. He didn't mean for the figure 10,000 to be a benchmark, or that "worst" necessarily meant "bad". It implies that over the course of your photography, there should be continued learning and improvement. So, following this theory, your first (whatever number) of photographs won't be as good as your next (whatever number) of photographs. Again, not literally every single one, but in the general sense.