Volume, Volume, Volume
I get more and more excited about the new possibilities our DSLR will enable us to pursue. I was reading up on street photography again (I used to do a lot of it in college) and was reminded of how many of the best photographers simply shoot more pictures than anyone else.
Garry Winogrand is famous for having exposed three rolls of Kodak TRI-X black and white film on the streets of New York City every day for his entire adult life. That’s 100 pictures a day, 36,500 a year, a million every 30 years. Winogrand died in 1984 leaving more than 2500 rolls of film exposed but undeveloped, 6500 rolls developed but not proofed, and 3000 rolls proofed but not examined (a total of a third of a million unedited exposures).
Amazing! In reality, you might only get one great picture out of 1000, which makes large volumes of shooting all the more important. Thank goodness I’m using digital!
Alissa wrote:
This is the link I was telling you about yesterday:
http://www.3situations.com/BillSullivanWorks/MTmaster.html
It’s not that the photos are awesome so much as the way it’s executed. Just look at those people.
Posted on 20-Feb-07 at 5:56 pm | Permalink
Emma wrote:
Looking forward to seeing your DSLR pics on Flickr :)
Posted on 22-Feb-07 at 1:45 am | Permalink
Tom Stappers wrote:
I read your remark about Garry Winogrand, in fact my favorite photographer, and hope the amazing numbers of pictures he took don’t get in the way of appreciation! I mentioned some of his quotes (bit different than the usual) on my new blog Words to Images, which will be part of my new website Tom Stappers/Photographer. I talked with other Dutch street photographers (not digital)about the issue of how many hits (1 out of how many takes ) and surprisingly we agreed on 1 per film or a bit less… but never 1 great picture out of a thousand! And we weren’t not boasting either. Be welcome to check my new site (and blog) and feel free to comment on quality…
Posted on 13-Mar-09 at 10:39 pm | Permalink