Moody Castle
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinc4/8378341797/in/photostream
Now I’m just making excuses to make everything dramatic. Like a low budget NatGeo production. Not that dramatic is a bad thing though. I think it is the only thing that makes my photos sucessful (to my standards). The bad thing about having a dramatic style is that I have to be very selective about the photos that I post on this blog or Facebook. Which leaves my blog in a state of starvation. Out of all the photos that I took on the trip to Europe only about 12 made it to the ‘upload’ folder. Then I weeded out half of them just because I thought they wouldn’t perform in the small icon world of Flickr. These photos I might post on the blog later. But my point is that being as selective as I am is not exactly good.
On the other hand, my fellow eye-candy brewer lights+shades frequently plans trips to Sydney Harbour, to local gardens and other photogenic places. His photostream has 335 items, compared to my pitiful 63. His blog, also my sister blog (lightsshades) is mainly run by me, and I am struggling to keep up with the amount of photos he has and I have heard he has more and more photos on the line from the trip to Europe. I continually find that his philosophy is almost exactly the opposite as mine. But that just makes things interesting as you can probably tell from the content I put up on his blog.
There is a lesson to learn from me. If you are going to take a photo, make sure you know what you are doing. Snapping photos randomly gives you a rate of about one interesting/useful photo to three thousand.
It’s possible if you bring a state-of-the-art 1.3 terabyte hardrive on all of your vacations though. Thats what I ended up doing.
Have a nice Monday!
Kevin Chen
The Famous Kevin.C4 
Interesting thoughts on the pros and cons of very different aims and approaches to taking photos. I tend favour taking more considered shots with a fairly low photo rate, but then I am not trying to keep a steady stream of good quality photos coming for a blog or two. The higher production rate probably makes it more likely that enough good photos will be available, but something about the style of the photos will be different, perhaps not what you really want to be producing? Tough choice!
I agree. I find that professionals tend to put alot more time and thought into their photos compared to amateurs, but that maybe because of freedom and because it is their job. When you take their example, that’s definately the way to take photos.
But when you are being whisked around in a tour, it is hard to produce a truly meaningful or well thought out photo. I am not a daily photo person, but I find that the 365 project people have photos that are more just snaps of everyday objects rather than a well composed landscape or a well lit portrait.
I expect you know that Ansel Adams considered it a good year if he managed twelve decent shots. But don’t be too hard on your self. The better I get, the more critical I become of ages I was once proud of. It’s not necessarily a good thing! Thank you very much for your recent comments on my blog. Much appreciated.
I think the pressure I am finding in producing more photos comes from the statistics. I know it is a record-label attitude, but before Europe, I hadn’t touched Flickr or Facebook for 6 months, and when I finally saw the numbers (or lack of) I felt as I was a doctor coming back to my practice after a extended vacation.
I think self-criticism is a good thing to a healthy extent. It allows you to look at your first panorama and think “The horizon’s crooked” instead of “Wow photoshop is amazing”. I agree that too much of it is a bad thing though.