Far off in off-topic land, Ray and Jan continue their ruminations.
(I'm not really sure which forum I should select for posting this in as a new thread, it seems to cross the boundaries between this forum and image processing ...)
Some day I'll probably have the best of my images up on a website, but in general I'm overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of images I haven't yet processed. In the days of film I would be much more careful exposing a frame because pressing that shutter button cost money. With a digital camera, it costs absolutely nothing to press the shutter, except the time to sort through the thousands of images.
Yes, and I find that this is a big enough problem in itself.
To digress further, when I read the article about the LF photographer who tried the P45 back and was all "ooh, aah, now I can take a bazillion pictures and select the best ones instead of having to concentrate a lot to take the best pictures", I was absolutely stunned.
I started out that way when I bought my first dSLR (the 20D in December 2004), and was that way for quite a long time.
But for me it's been useless for getting good pictures in itself; it's been useful only as a learning process.
The best pictures seem to crop up when I make plans, consider what effects I want to get, and take between one and a handful of shots.
This seems to be equally true for my street, architecture, portrait and landscape photography.
I know theoretically it shouldn't take too long to zip through say 4,000 images and select a hundred of the best to work on, but I get easily side-tracked demonstrating some point on LL or comparing RawShooter with ACR etc. One of the joys and advantages of being an amateur I suppose.
For selecting and processing these images, I think I like both Adobe Bridge and Lightroom. I might like Aperture, too. Lightroom and Aperture would win for selecting the images with the best focus and detail, considering their nifty zoom features.
What annoys me in my hobbyist world, is that I can't seem to find the time to consider my images carefully enough.
I just recently went back to a shoot I had in February last year, because I had a vague recollection about a nice reflected sunset scene that I might be able to do something about. Why hadn't I done anything about it earlier? Well, when I had the time to do something about it, I was out shooting!
So there's this nasty compromise between taking more pictures -- which I love -- and selecting the keepers, winners and portfolio candidates.
I don't expect this compromise to disappear completely if I became a full-time photographer, but I think it's more prominent with us hobbyists.
Well, for those hobbyists who have more than one hobby, anyway. :cool: