My clients are often shocked when they hear my camera's shutter clicking away during a session. "How many pictures are you taking?" they'll ask. "More than a hundred?" Uh,... a little more than that actually... closer to 4-600 in an hour! I've gotten used to the surprise and to ease their minds, I now begin most sessions by telling them, "So, you should know... I take A LOT of photographs." I don't want them to be alarmed or think that it has something to do with them, like they are especially difficult or something and that's why I'm blasting away. Nope. I take a lot of photographs. The main reason I'm taking so many isn't to improve the composition of an image or in the hopes that I might just get lucky. I take so many in order to capture fleeting expressions. I've found that I'm very often not fast enough to catch an expression that I like if I wait for it, especially the kind of expressions that are moving; I need to be shooting while it's happening in short bursts in the hopes of catching it (slower, more pensive expressions are easier to catch).
Now, I realize that photography purists, especially pre-digital types, will cringe at the idea of taking 10 frames per minute for a solid hour under any circumstances or for any reason, and I understand where they're coming from, I really do. No amount of machine-gun photography is going to result in a good image if the creative process isn't more involved than the index finger. But that doesn't mean taking a lot of photographs is inherently bad. Digital cameras and computers have opened up a whole new world of experimentation options that were never available to students of photography before. You can learn from your "mistakes" so quickly now, and from your successes. You get unprecedented amounts of feedback from your camera instantly and, better yet, when you get home on your monitor just a little while later. This kind of learning was unheard of just 10 years ago (5?). As you improve and learn, obviously the sheer number of photos should probably come down; you'll know better what it is you're after and more and more of the experimenting will take place in your head before you ever push the shutter release. So, get out there and put those fancy cameras you all have now to good use... take more photographs and then learn from them.
(Come see the fun slideshow of this entire session in another post ... all 600+ photos in one song! It's an interesting look at how I work)
