Now tell me you could do that in the old days of film. Digital certainly has its advantages, and the ability to cut loose with the shutter is one of the main ones. If you take 1250 shots in two days as I just did, and assuming you are at least a reasonably proficient photographer (as I’d like to think I am) then it’s not that hard to come up with 2-300 really nice photos. That’s a ratio of somewhere between 1 in 6 and 1 in 4. In the old days, when you couldn’t afford to take so many shots, you might have, in the same circumstances, taken about 250 shots. The difference being that then, having to take a hell of a lot more care before pressing the shutter, the ratio would have invariably been a lot higher, possibly 1in 3 or 1 in 2. Still that would at best give you 125 great shots, compared to the 320 odd I rated as 2 star (I’m currently very frugal with my rating stars – I want some room for when I get better, you see :)).

So, what was the occasion for taking so many pictures? Well, I shot my first child care center. I did the photos for my daughter’s day care, and in fact I actually took closer to 1500 shots. I just didn’t count all the group shots, as you stand there taking 30 or 40 shots just to get one where they’re all smiling and have open eyes (and even then you have to be very lucky). But I spent two full days shooting the kids while they played, ate and slept. It was a real hoot. Kids are just so amazing to be around – their energy is incredible, and their perspective on life is a real tonic to a cynical 42 year old such as myself (OK, pat on the back time, it’s my birthday today – I’m getting old).

So in the last few days I have been rating and rating, and sorting and renaming, and in the end I hope to do a small exhibition and a whole lot of prints to the parents. It’s a lot different from the line them up against the wall type of shooting common to school shoots, but I wanted to get real shots of the kids, and not just bad portraits.

I will post some shots when I get some releases from the parents. There’s a lot of privacy issues obviously, but I hope to get model releases for most of the shots, so I can use them in folios and web sites and what have you.

But yeah, I just wanted to point out that good photography is not always about skill. You obviously need the technical skill to capture the light in the way you want to, but apart from that, throw a digital camera at kids for two days running, chances are you will come up with some absolute crackers. I did.

[tags]digital vs film, children’s portraits[/tags]