I saw two signs this week.
The first one said ‘CATS EYES REMOVED’ and I thought that’s an odd thing to advertise in public.
The second one said ‘Success is not Happiness’ and I thought of course it is, and happiness is success. But the issue with society is that no amount of success is enough success. Whenever you have some you want more, there’s no success summit. So we’re never happy.
I saw that one on a trip to London when I was feeling incredibly consciously grateful that I’m good enough at photography that people pay me to do it.
Crazy really.
We should appreciate that more often.
Anyway, this week has been a week of constant culling. Despite telling you a few weeks ago how I cull within a day or two of every wedding, I fell behind massively and my whole workflow fell apart.
I fell behind because I’m shooting a lot of weddings. But I was also being lazier than usual about culling for some reason. Lesson learned, it won’t happen again.
But the worst thing is that I’m overshooting massively at the moment. I’m averaging well over 10,000 frames per wedding, with two recent weddings nearly hitting 15k each.
That’s daunting to cull, and that’s what was holding me back.
Now, I’ve always been an advocate of ‘more is more’ when shooting. I think as storage is cheap, and cameras are built like tanks, why not just shoot a lot of frames.
Well. I’ll tell you why not.
Clicking for the sake of clicking, just adds to the cull time pointlessly.
Of my 10-15k frames, lots of them I just didn’t need to click.
I just needed to wait… then click when the thing happened.
But I’ve got into a habit of clicking as soon as I have a shot lined up — BEFORE the moment happens.
That’s fine, if the moment is ABOUT to happen. But that’s not what I’m doing. I’m just clicking a photo I know I’m going to have to cull later. And that’s stupid. Each of those clicks is just costing me time and shutter life.
The second thing I’m doing is taking the same EXACT shot over and over again.
Speeches is a good example. Best man speech. Shot of best man smiling/laughing after saying something… groom laughing at best man… bride laughing at groom. Real examples from a recent wedding.
But for some reason, I just kept cycling round these shots over and over and over. Taking the exact same composition/moment again and again.
When I used to do workshops I often talked about ‘mental tick boxes’. Know the shots you’ve taken and don’t re-take them. Either just don’t click, or find a new angle/composition and at least take a completely different shot of the same/similar moment. But ideally go and find a different element of the story.
I think since the ‘enforced break’ I’ve fallen back into old bad habits of shooting everything and everyone that moves and panicking that if I miss one little thing it’s the end of the world.
It’s not the end of the world.
My plan for this weekend is to be much more conscious of each click. Stop clicking for the sake of it, and just adding to the culling time with shots that are never going to make it into Lightroom.
Let’s see if I can get back towards the 6000-8000 shots per wedding I was averaging before the public health sabbatical.
Two weddings for me this weekend. And my son is playing in his first football cup final with his under 10’s team on Saturday. Please send positive vibes his way as he’d absolutely love to win it. Of course I’m doing the right thing and telling him as long as he enjoys it, that’s all that matters but MAN ALIVE I will cry so many happy tears if he wins!
Happy conscious clicking! Thanks for reading!
Adam
