Here is the answery bit
Get out more and take photos, but take fewer photos. This will help you take better photos. Getting out more and taking photos gives you lots more opportunities to create new stuff. But don’t try to create too much new stuff, or you will just end up with lots of average photos that you do not have the time to do anything meaningfully with.
And none of us want that, do we? No, we don’t, Rick.
Hi, and a very warm welcome to Episode 186 of the Photography Explained podcast. I hope you are well. I’m your host, Rick, and In each episode, I explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 27 minutes (ish) without the irrelevant details. I’m a professionally qualified photographer based in England with a lifetime of photographic experience, which I share with you in my podcast.
You can listen to the episode here
Or keep on reading – up to you!
The talky bit
This is a very talky episode.
Right – the case for getting out more and taking photos.
There is no downside to this. Every time you get out taking photos, you can create something new. That is what photography is: drawing with light. So get out more taking photos, and you are practising what photography actually is.
There are no negatives to getting out and taking photos. Well, there are none that I can think of anyway.
Getting out and taking photos gets us away from our computers and other devices, which is good for the mind and the body. It also gets us off social media, which has to be a good thing.
All good. There are no negatives to this.
OK- there is one negative.
And it is this.
Go out loads and take loads of photos. What are you likely to end up with?
If you are lucky, you might have captured a load of average photos. This means that you might have captured a load of photos that you don’t do anything with. Well, if you can’t see the good stuff, what is the point?
You also have a catalogue full of average, boring, uninspiring photos. You might have edited some of them, but probably not many, if any.
You have so many photos that you can’t see where the good ones are if there are any. So, you need a considerable amount of time to find something decent to edit if there is anything.
Or, you spend a ton of time editing a load of average photos.
Why is this? Well, if you go out lots and take lots of photos you can’t spend much time and thought on the taking photos bit, can you?
No – this is the problem.
And here is the case for taking fewer photos and, therefore, creating fewer pictures!
First, I got my grammar correct: I said take fewer photos, not less photos. That is good.
If you consciously take fewer photos and think about what you are taking photos of, there is a great chance that you will take better photos. If you take fewer better photos, you are not cluttering your storage space with rubbish. No, your hard drive will thank you. And you will have less wear on every memory card you possess! See, everyone will thank you for taking fewer photos.
You can see the good stuff. And this will massively increase your enjoyment of digital photography.
No longer will you be out there photographing everything and anything.
Remember what I said last week?
How my one-photo rule can help you
The basic principle is this: Take one photo. Well, of course, it is. I am talking about a sunrise; get one photo. Do this, and you can enjoy that wonderful golden hour! And I have done this for many, many sunrises. Make that your aim when you get there. When photographing a building, I will take one photo of the front and then move on. I won’t take four or five photos of the front from slightly different angles. I used to.
And I need to expand on this. If I need to give a client 20 photos for a shoot, if I only take 20 photos, I have absolutely nailed it. If I take 100 photos, then I consider that I have failed.
I hope that clarifies my one-photo rule. Taking one photo is the best way to improve your photography.
OK – the take fewer photos rule
The one photo rule might be too much for you. And that is fine, I understand. You might find the one-photo rule uncomfortable. To begin with, make a conscious decision to take fewer photos than you would typically take. Making this decision is the starting point of the journey to photographic happiness. This is a journey, after all, from what we have been used to doing to where we want to get to – taking fewer but better photos.
And the last bit from the last episode.
Portfolio swappers – always try to take a better photo
So choose your best 20 photos—no more. Every time you go out and take photos, aim to get one image that can go in your portfolio. You will have to remove one image to do this, so it has to be better.
Professional photographers do not just take photos of anything; they think about every photo.
OK—these things from the last episode were entirely relevant to this subject. Blimey, it sometimes appears like this stuff is planned!
Concentrate on the main subject of a photo, think about your camera settings, and strive to get the best results every time you take a photo.
What if I use my phone to take photos and not a camera?
It is even easier to take loads of rubbish with our mobile devices as they are so easy to use and always with us. I know it is easy to do with digital cameras, but much more so with phones; phones have worsened the problem. Not that this is a criticism of smartphone cameras, far from it – they are amazing.
But they have removed the deliberateness of taking a photo, transforming photography into something else altogether. Again, this is not a criticism; it is the natural evolution of photography made possible by advances in technology.
I want people to know that there is more to photography than taking endless, thoughtless photos with our phones. There is a much more considered, deliberate, thoughtful part of photography that people who have gotten into photography with their phones might never know about—not unless they all listen to me, ha!
So this is what you need to do.
Create a folder on your smartphone (shoehorned that term in nicely again), call it “My Portfolio – Important”, and add your best photos one at a time and love and appreciate them. Edit, value, and nurture them – these are your portfolio in its building phase. Think of these as old-school photo albums, a place where you put your best photos and look at them. Or you could go crazy and create a photo book out of them – that is well worth doing. Why not try it? Get your photos out of your camera roll, off your phone and into a book, which is a great way to appreciate your photos.
What do I do?
I bang on about this stuff, don’t I? For a reason. I want to encourage everyone into photography to get out more taking photos but, to take fewer, better photos. I need to get out more taking photos myself. It is good for the soul, and the portfolio of course!
This is what I used to do.
Take loads of photos with very little thought. Download them onto my computer. Have a quick look at them. Be disappointed. Not edit any of them. Then go out and do the same. And again. And again.
Every now and then, I would edit the odd photo, the odd decent image, but as the photos were taken with so little thought and were so average at best, so I got disillusioned. There was only the odd decent image, obscured by a load of rubbish. I probably consoled myself by buying more gear, as I thought that was what I needed to improve my photography.
Of course, it wasn’t. All I needed to do was stop and think what I was taking photos of.
Now, I think before I press the shutter button. I try to take great photos, not just good photos. Image quality is my priority. Not quantity. The best photos I have captured have all, without exception, had thought behind them. Without exception. And this does not necessarily mean spending a lot of time.
That is what I do.
Oh yes, I have written many blog posts on this, which you can find on my other website, rickmcevoyphotography.com.
My Survey on phones and cameras
I have set up a survey on this subject. I would appreciate it if you completed the survey, which will take 2 minutes. Just head over to Photography Explained Podcast.com/survey2024.
I will pick up the survey results in a future episode, so thanks in anticipation for your assistance with this.
Some thoughts from the last episode
Take interesting photos. It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? But how many times have you pressed the shutter button and not taken an interesting photo?
If I take this photo, will I be bothered to edit it? This is such a great question, which came to me when I looked at the photos I had taken and added to my Lightroom catalogue that were, quite frankly, rubbish.
Get it right in camera, save time and have better photos to work with. Technical correctness is an expectation, especially with all the tech available to us these days.
And my good old one photo rule. And if you don’t like that, try my take fewer photos rule.
This is all good stuff that can help us save loads of time that we do not need to spend, which gives us more time to do the thing we should be doing if we love photography—creating new photos! What is not to love?
What is the next episode of the Photography Explained Podcast?
I am getting to the end of my series on taking better photos, which I started, would you believe, in episode 172 all the way back in January of this year! Blimey, how did that happen? And there were more than 11 episodes. So, in the last of the series, maybe, an episode about becoming excellent at one photography thing. The title ended up being How To Find Your Photography Niche – 10 Top Tips From Me – yes, I have already written the script for this too!
Ask me a question for the Photography Explained Podcast
If you have a question you would like me to answer, email me at sales@rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk or head over to the podcast website photographyexplainedpodcast.com/start.
Also, check out the questions page, where there is a big old list of things you can choose from.
And if you want to say hi, please do – it would be great to hear from you.
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Right, I’m done.
This episode was brought to you by cheese on toast washed down with coffee—I just fancied that as a mid-morning snack before I settled down in my homemade, acoustically cushioned recording emporium. I’ve been Rick McEvoy. Thanks again very much for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast (it says here) and for giving me 27 minutes of your valuable time. This episode will be about 23 minutes long after I have edited out the mistakes and other bad stuff.
See you in the next episode.
Take care and stay safe
Cheers from me, Rick
That was the podcast episode.
Want to know more?
Head over to the Start page on the Photography Explained Podcast website to find out more.
And here is the list of episodes published to date – you can listen to any episode straight from this page which is nice.
Let me know if there is a photography thing that you want me to explain and I will add it to my list. Just head over to the This is my list of things to explain page of this website to see what is on there already.
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And finally a little bit about me
Finally, yes this paragraph is all about me – check out my Rick McEvoy Photography website to find out more about me and my architectural, construction, real estate and travel photography work. I also write about general photography stuff, all in plain English without the irrelevant detail.
Thank you
Thanks for listening to my podcast (if you did) and reading this blog post (which I assume you have done as you are reading this).
Cheers from me Rick
