How do you select the right shot?

[koshki]

For Anton and all the other photo gurus:

How do you select the best shot? I've learned a lot from your suggestions, and I think I'm taking better pictures...lots of them. But now I have so many shots to sort through, I'm going cross-eyed!

So, what goes in to a good shot? How do I decide which is a better shot than another (particularly for posting here!)

Thanks!

[benetay]

I take about 70 shots per flower and i view them through the pc to choose which one is the best. I practice the rule : clarity, sharpness and crispness. If i'm on a trip, i'll have to sort through thousands of photos. Keepers will get higher when you start shooting more and the number of shots may or may not decrease.

It depends on what kind of a picture you're going to portray, if it's about solitary, then the picture must have the feeling of that. If it's just to portray a flower with a dark background, it's slightly easier. Still 70 shots isn't a lot to begin with. I took some pictures yesterday and i found i took easily 200+ shots, i chose the best of the best.

Apart from the clarity, sharpness and crispness, we can also look into the lighting and colours, which must resemble at least 95% of what you're shooting. There are no hard and fast rule for a great shot but once you learn the basic, you unlearn and re-learn to use the basic as a guide but not the rule, hence being more creative.

Photography by itself is a hobby, interest and can be a career. So you must know where you are standing in-order from going overboard. (Just like a hobbyist, collector and distributor of orchids). That will determine if you should be overly dogmatic about a great shot that we hobbyist enjoy. Having said that, a sharp shot is a good way to begin selecting. My first cut will be all un-sharp shots will be removed followed by bad lighting then onto bad positioning, bad perspective, bad orientation, etc etc until i cut my numbers down to the last 2-3 of the same shot. Finally, i'll see which will gave a better portray of the flower as i set them side by side to scrutinize their flaws. I'll pick the one with the least flaws in it but nevertheless a great shot among the plenty.

As time goes by, i'll learn the technique and i'll be less trigger happy but since i love playing with external flash to give contrast and mood, i may still have to take as much as 70 shots per flower. Then if it reblooms next time, i'll try to shoot and even better shot using the previous bloom picture as a benchmark.

Hope that helps.

Cheers!

[Schlyne]

Thank you benetay, I know I do a lot of those things, but I couldn't come up with the right words to express everything I do.

I start out by automatically deleting the photos I screwed up on 100%. Blurry, wrong thing in focus, etc, after I've moved the photos to the computer. Then I go in and write protect all my photos so that when I'm cropping them later or resizing (so you guys aren't trying to wade through my 8-10 meg gigantic photos shot at a huge size for more detail) so that I don't accidentally save over the original photo.

Photography is a hobby for me, but it's something I need to work on. I'm currently shooting with a hybrid (it looks like a point and shoot, but you can change out the lenses). Right now this camera is more tricked out and is newer than my SLR. (Also, my main SLR lens in still in the shop...it's looking like it's too old to be fixed and I'll just have to bite the bullet and replace it).

I don't take near as many shots as benetay does of the flowers, but I do take several shots.

[lmartiny]

I'm pretty basic and amateur. I take 10-15 shots. Most are blurry and I delete and find the best. Then I ponder over what is left, much like your are probably doing. I try to narrow down to ones where the petals aren't cut off and what not. Then say the "hell with it" and pick best I can. Sorry, not very technical advice.

[syndywindy]

Having learned some from Anton, I probably take about 20 pictures of each bloom. I don't know that I have a real technical eye for which is better. Sometimes the images look so similar that it's hard to tell the difference. The changes can be so subtle, I haven't gotten that photographer's eye to know which would be percieved as being better. I just keep trying, changing techniques and writing down what I've done so I can refer back if I need to.

[ALJ]

I also enjoy photography as a hobby. Making sure that the subject is clear and in focus is definitely your goal. To develop a "photographer's eye" I learned to place the subject in different lighting scenarios (ie. front lit, back lit, side lit, etc.) The more you play with the position of the subject in relation to its light source, you'll be amazed at how light can change the mood of the image you create. Also don't be afraid to try different camera angles. Think of a model photographer who instructs his/her models to do several poses and positions. When it finally comes time to choose, you'll have a variety of shots to pick from. Choosing the right one will be a bit time consuming, but it's definitely worth it.

[benetay]

That's right, putting theory into practice can somehow be very rewarding. If i have taken a similar flower before, the settings are usually the same. I'll also take fewer shots to get what i want. It could just be 2-3 shots and you just got it. However, there are many angles you can take from and this will certainly change various perspective. I'm sure those photos that i've post recently comprises of more than 1 angle and it shows that there is no one right way.

At the end of the day, we as hobbyist wish to showcase and portray our pretty orchids to share with the rest. I guess it justify the energy it had put through from bud to bloom by sharing it with others. Hence, we can do just as much to show the beauty. I'm not sure what program you use for editing but usually once you put 'Save as' another name the original file will still be intact. This cut down a lot of workflow time by write protecting etc. Once i select the shots i want, i'll edit it, put it into another folder and then delete whatever that is not used for editing. The original file will be kept and backup on the external HDD (photos uses a lot of space) and will delete it from the main computer.

I stick to this principle, it's not the setting(of the camera) but the setup (background, flower placement, perspective shown lighting, etc etc), it's not the camera but the technique and the person behind it.

Cheers!

[exasperatus2002]

Great question Thanks for asking.

[Schlyne]

When I write protect my photos, I just select them all, go into the properties tab, and change them to be read only. This way if I accidentally hit the save button, instead of save as (which I've done before I won't have just erased my original) I also categorize all my photos by the date I've taken them and I put all the photos I've edited into a separate folder within that date folder with a "finished" folder. There's probably a better way to organize than that, but that's the way I do it. If it's a big event thing, like I went to the zoo and shot a lot of pictures, it'll get a named folder instead. And I view all my photo folders as thumbnails. I work with all my photos in photoshop elements and view them all in the standard windows photo viewer thing to flip through them when I'm previewing photos to pull out to work with.

I try to regularly back up my photos by burning them onto dvds. I still have a hard drive that needs to be sent into data recovery because I didn't get the photos backed up in time

[benetay]

Yup! Seems like your workflow is pretty much same with mine minus the write protection.

Cheers!

[jerrymeola]

I paid my way through college working as a professional photographer. Everything comes with experience.

You will stop having so many problems when you learn to edit what you shoot before you press the button. The biggest problem I saw with digital photography is that the "free" shooting of numerous prints and then deleting allows beginners to take bad photos and lose the ability to see.

I used to shot weddings and film proofs were expensive so I would get assignments such as - Do not shoot more than 5 rolls of film (60 photos). Within this criteria I could shoot everything the bride and groom would want.

In orchids it is easy as they do not move on you. Take the time to see what is in the viewfinder. Move around to see different angles before shooting. There is no excuse for a bad background - you should have seen it before you shot.

Bad exposure or bad focus should be a seldom seen problem. The is technique. If it is happening shoot until you understand why it is happening. The monitor in the camera should show you if the photo was terrible from a bad setting or camera movement. Most beginners never to seen to ask themselves why. If you do not know why it happened you can not avoid it next time. Experience is learning from your mistakes. And we all make lots of mistakes.

With experience you will "see' the best angle. Lighting should not be a problem as most orchids should be shot in full shade. That will give you plenty of light and no bad shadows. Sunlight will often shift the color density on part of the flower but not all of it.

I do a lot of orchid shows. I can not leave my sales booth for very long and often will shoot 40 orchids in under 10 minutes. It is not hard with experience. I usually take only one photo, occasionally 2. I rejected all the others before I shot. From experience I can look at an orchid and know what angle will give me the best representation of the flower. All I do then is improve the background and shoot.

I do this automatically but here is the list of a basic thought process.
1 be sure the settings on the camera are correct before you begin.
2 move around until the background is no longer distracting. You need to be watching the viewfinder to be certain.
3 focus on the throat of the primary flower. This is very important. A slight error in focus will move your eye to a different part of the photo.
4. Look to see if a slight change in position will make a noticeably different photograph. Here is where I will make an exception and shoot several photos if each is different compositionally.

I have over 2000 photos of different orchids. Most were shot in under 1 minute. They are at Orchid Gallery selection page

[benetay]

well said! Experience is what is required. The more you shoot the better you get and shooting orchid is really easy compared to outdoor nature photography where you have to hike miles and miles just to know that you've missed that shot.

Cheers!