And more often than not those sketches get thrown away. That's an important lesson to learn as a photographer. You don't have to make a great picture every time you go out with your camera. But you certainly won't make any great pictures unless you go out and shoot.
I recently went to one of the beaches in Marblehead to take some photos. In fact, I took a lot of photos. This one little forlorn row-boat with peeling paint--laying upside down way at the back of the boat yard-- caught me eye. The light wasn't great (midday and sunny) so I went back a couple of days later, on an overcast morning and took another dozen or so photos of it. I even cracked out the tripod.
I've been looking at those photos for a few days now. I keep going back to them, running through them in full-screen view on my laptop. And you know what? I just don't like them. So I'm going to save my hard drive the space (and my mind the obsession) and just delete them.
This is a big step for me, especially after spending so much time and effort to try to get a good shot of that little rowboat. I'm a definite hanger-on-er when it comes to photos, even the ones I don't like. Sure, I delete anything that's out of focus or has other problems that can't be fixed in Photoshop. But I usually keep even the pictures that are technically fine but that just don't sing. The truth is, you're lucky (or I am, at least) if one shot out of 40 is a keeper.
All of which adds up to a LOT of photo files on my computer. It's not that I can't back them up (my new laptop has a CD burner), but it can be overwhelming going through all the photos I've taken, trying to find the ones that are worth printing or uploading to Flickr. And I don't neccessarily want to waste time making backups of photos I don't like and will probably never print or post or show to anyone, for that matter.
I think, going forward at least, I'm going to try to be more ruthless.
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