Watching A Real Good Photographer and wondering about listening....

[AB26]

the pro's camera is rattling like a machine gun.

Hi Philip,
I think you may be right here. Try opening a thousand 50MB files on your computer. And I am not even talking about shooting with a 200MP Hasselblad.

[Colin Southern]

Hi Philip,
I think you may be wrong here. Try opening a thousand 50MB files on your computer. And I am not even talking about shooting with a 200MP Hasselblad.

It really depends on "the mission" - 800 to 1200 would be pretty typical of a wedding shooter - sometimes I'm up to 800 or so for a studio shoot.

Of course with my 1Dx, 800 shots is only a minute's shooting

[AB26]

Hi,
Please re-read post 21+22. The wrong in post 21 should be a right.

I have to agree with Philip. The pro should not fire like a machine gun.

Sorry Colin no agreement on that.

My younger bro was a pro wedding shooter in the 80's. His opinion about a pro shooting 1000 shots at a wedding "he does not know what he is doing." In those days he was shooting Hasselblad and Bronica. Ratteling off shots was a costly affair. Maybe he is one of a dying breed of pro. Those whom had to get it right with as few shots as possible.

[Inkanyezi]

I think numbers can be highly relevant in this equation, and it isn't a matter of coming home with a thousand shots with a number of saleable ones. To me it is rather the fact that the pro will deliver, and sometimes it is a matter only of delivering one single image, but THE image that your client wants.

I once worked with photography. That was back in the late sixties and early seventies. I also had one assignment in the early eighties, but somehow I decided not to pursue becoming a professional, whether part-time or full time. The last assignment produced about two hundred slides, most of which were saleable and about half of them got sold as prints.

A good amateur mostly has a far higher hit rate than a few percent. The pro, on a bad day, may have fewer hits, but he's forced to deliver and almost always will. The amateur on a bad day can keep his camera in the bag, but a professional on assignment cannot. That was one of the differences I saw between turning pro and staying amateur. Another issue, for me, was that I was not willing to do all the footwork necessary to find customers. I realised that in order to get reasonable money, I had to spend far too much time with other things than taking pictures, and that I also would have to take assignments that were not very appealing. And maybe the most important reason for not becoming a pro photographer was that there were also other things that I wanted to do.

In some cases, the pro approach to the actual picture-taking is not a matter of hit and miss rate, but pursuing an idea, just as any other artist. Once I had a job to produce one picture, of an item that other professionals had done before me, but where the client wanted a better image, one that would better show the room and convey what the client saw as the beauty in their machinery and the room itself where it was set up. This was a dairy central, and the room was entirely clad in stainless steel. The machine too was stainless steel, and the only thing that was not stainless was the white nylon of a chain conveyor for milk cartons. I worked three days on that project after first finding a general idea of how to do it. I took twenty-two shots in total. Four or five of them were reasonable, and two were really good, uncounted the polaroids I used to find out how I should move the light. The set was first sprayed matte, and it was exposed with one lamp that was moved around, but always hidden from the camera. A half day was spent cleaning up the mess.

The picture was not a great piece of art. It was a good photograph, showing what the client wanted to show, in the way the client perceived that room, even though in reality it looked very different, with reflections all over and bright spots as well as dark corners, due to the specular properties of the material itself. Unlike the other photographers that did it, I had taken the time to find out what the client wanted, and I had also gained access to the room for an extended period when no production was possible, which for the client had a much higher cost than what I charged for my work. It was the decision of the client to take that cost, and he got what he wanted from it. That rather "everyday-like" image cost much more than I would ever charge for a picture, but at last everyone was satisfied, and I think I used a professional approach.

Another of my assignments might merit mentioning as well. I had one assignment over many years, going to a water-tower to take one image every week through a couple of years, then continued several more years once a month, to document a crack in the concrete structure in order to see whether it was changing. After first finding out at which time of day contrast on the interesting part of the structure was best, this was a pure bread job, including nothing more than taking that picture and delivering it to the client with time-stamp.

The bottom line is that when you are a professional one of the main issues is to deliver. Sometimes you'll have do a lot of preparation to get that unique shot that your client asks for, and sometimes it is just a job that must be done. If you are also taking care of all business-related issues, there are other skills involved, as well as a lot of time spent on things less related to taking photos.

[yobenny]

Well I read Scott Kelby's digital photography volume one last night (am bedridden with the flu) and now feel supremely confident in calling myself a professional bed ridden book reader.....

[Colin Southern]

I have to agree with Philip. The pro should not fire like a machine gun.

Sorry Colin no agreement on that.

My younger bro was a pro wedding shooter in the 80's. His opinion about a pro shooting 1000 shots at a wedding "he does not know what he is doing." In those days he was shooting Hasselblad and Bronica. Ratteling off shots was a costly affair. Maybe he is one of a dying breed of pro. Those whom had to get it right with as few shots as possible.

I would suggest that it depends on what is being shot. I don't know of any wedding photographers who would have a camera firing on burst mode the entire day (hence the "machine gun" effect), but many top shooters would easily top 1200 shots on a 12 hour wedding day. David Ziser is one that comes to mind (a "pro's pro") - started in the 1960s - still going strong - at over $10,000 per wedding.

[MrB]

I have to agree with Philip. The pro should not fire like a machine gun.

Just to clarify, Andre, my "machine gun" comment in post #19 is an observation, not a criticism.

Cheers.
Philip

[AB26]

Yes Philip, I do believe all members of CiC only make observations. For criticism you would have to have scientific proof. To proof anything scientifically you would have to formulate it mathematically.

We may sometimes make crude observations. Fortunately, observations are subject to change when you can be convinced to look at the situation from a different perspective.
I would think it is simply not practical to shoot like a machine gun. If it suits your style, you can do it, if it does not suit your style you would not do it.
Did Mr. Adams shoot like a machine gun?

Colin, a 12 hour day is a long day - what would a David Ziser pie graph, as illustrated above, look like?
Another observation!