What is your success rate?

M

MclarenF1GTR

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55
Name
Josep
Edit My Images
No
During the last Christmas holiday I decided to delete all pictures and start again. In part it was because I learned new editing procedures and partly because what I saw did not quite satisfy to me.
Although there is still much to do, now the result is quite satisfying me.
Anyway, my concern is always the same. Racing Photography is not like the landscape or portrait, which always (or almost always) you can repeat. When the race is over, there is no second chance. So I have some good failures. Perhaps the most recent was the race of Group C held at the Paul Ricard circuit in October 2010. The small number of participants, together with my nervousness to get snapshots of some cars that fascinate me, give a result which was really poor (in number of good shots), so my frustration was enormous.
After shooting 300-400 photos, you stay with 100 images and only 40 photos are published. Perhaps this is normal, but when I think about professional photographers, I feel a little overwhelmed.
Does anyone have that same feeling? Probably I have to to learn a lot yet.:thinking:
 
If your shooting that ratio of shots to keepers (by which i mean good shots not technically correct) and then getting 40% of those shots published you are doing very well indeed.

If i shot 1500 shots over a 2 day event i would expect to have about 250 shots which i consider good shots from that weekend. For example a shot of the car which is in focus sharp, correctly framed but contains nothing interesting would not make the cut.

From that 250 i would expect maybe 5 to be published. The others get abandoned on the web to rot, about 10 get shown to you lot and maybe about 100 get sent off to customers.
 
Thanks.
On the other hand, you have very interesting pictures. Those about DTM are very good.
can I ask you if you are "press accredited"?
Josep
 
Thanks Josep,

Yes i am accredited for all the events i go to. Although my 'style' often involves shooting from spectator positions.
 
i always take loads of pics as i know most will be rubbish, i have started taking pics of people and this has doubled, factoring in me moving, camera shake and the people moving
 
Define "success"...

* You are happy with them?
* Others are happy with them?
* Someone is happy enough with them to part with cash for them?

Its always "how many do you need?" as the ultimate question. If I shoot 1000 shots over the course of a weekend, maybe a few hundred are total garbage, several hundred are ok, several hundred are good enough but only a handful are the stand out shots - and thats it, "stand out" rather than good enough.

The essential skill is to be able to identify the best photos for the job required from whatever you've shot... and in a "pro" scenario, to be able to do that quickly.

If you wanted a hundred, I could give you the best hundred, if you wanted a dozen, I'd give you the best dozen. If you were an editor of a newspaper that will use just one, I'd give you just one - the best one that best fits the story, which might not be the best photo perceived by another photographer.... but no point in using a shiny pic of a Ferrari when a Ford won the race :D
 
Thanks to all for your replies. They have been useful for me.
... and it's absolutely true that "no point in using a shiny pic of a Ferrari when a Ford won the race :D or 3 Audi win over 4 Peugeot because race weather conditions were different to test days weather:bang:
 
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