I edit the crap out of my photos.
Most of my photos are crap. During a typical bout, I'll shoot between 500 and 1000 photos. Then I sit down and remove all the out-of-focus shots, the poorly exposed shots, and the shots where nothing interesting is happening. When that's done, I usually have 100 to 200 photos that are worth posting. Then I make a second pass to select the best 50 to 100 shots of this bunch, and I edit each one to make it look better. In many cases, even a good photo has crap that I edit out.
Here's an extreme example. In the original photo below, I managed to focus sharply on jammer Heather Juska, but the composition is awful:
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| Original unedited image (1/500 sec, f/3.2, ISO 3200, two remote flashes) |
At the very least, I'd crop this image to remove the dead space on the bottom and right side. But I wanted to highlight Heather's face, and the refs and other skaters don't really add anything to this shot, so I cropped even tighter. After a few more tweaks to improve the brightness and color balance, I settled on this image as the final version:
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| Final version after cropping, brightening, color correction, noise reduction, and sharpening |
My point is that when you look at my photos, you literally don't know what you're missing. If I've done my job correctly, you see only the good stuff and none of the crap.
I shoot the types of photos that I enjoy seeing.
This is probably obvious: I shoot the things that are interesting to me, not the ones I think might be interesting to someone else. Although there are lots of things happening at a bout, I always end up focusing on the action. My most satisfying shots are the ones that convey a combination of conflict, emotion, action, and beauty. Those are the types of photos that I usually seek out from other photographers, although I also enjoy seeing them capture details that wouldn't have caught my attention. When I'm editing it's easier to ask, "Do I like this photo?" than to ask, "Will other people like it?"
I find it easier to capture a scene than create one.
This is the other reason I tend to take mostly action shots. Although they're technically challenging to shoot, action photos don't require a lot of creativity. It's hard for me to visualize in advance what a scene will look like from various angles or under different lighting conditions, so my style is pretty straightforward and learned through trial and error. That's not to say action shots can't be creative or artistic, but a photojournalistic style is perfectly acceptable.
When shooting non-action photos, there's a lot more flexibility to create the look of a scene, or to create the entire scene by having subjects pose for the camera. A more creative photographer would welcome that flexibility, but I haven't yet developed the intuition to create great scenes. This is where I think I need the most improvement.
I shamelessly copy other photographers' techniques.
When I see a photo I really like, I study it to figure out why: What's interesting about the subject? How is the scene composed? What's in focus, and what's out of focus? Where is the light coming from? And most importantly, how can I adapt these techniques to suit my own preferences?
Here in Seattle, I've had the pleasure of shooting roller derby with several very talented photographers. It's a huge learning aid to see the same bout through the eyes of different people, to see what they focus on, to understand how and why. I'm especially indebted to Jules Doyle, who not only takes awesome photos but also takes the time to answer my questions. I can only hope to help other photographers as much as Jules has helped me.
