Quality vs. Quantity
Perfection comes with repetition and in today’s era of digital cameras we have the ability to shoot a lot! We’re not limited by 24-shot film rolls nor do we have the tedious task of exposing images in a darkroom. Memory cards are inexpensive. We get instant feedback by reviewing images on the back of the camera and all we need to edit is a computer and Adobe Lightroom. My approach to getting awesome images is to shoot a ton and try many different angles and techniques. The more I shoot, the more I’m able to hone in, find my flow and get perfect shots.
I just finished reading the book Atomic Habits. In it, the author references an experiment where a photography professor tests the quality vs. quantity debate on his students. Below is an excerpt.
The Danger of Aiming for Perfection
On the first day of class, Jerry Uelsmann, a professor at the University of Florida, divided his film photography students into two groups.
Everyone on the left side of the classroom, he explained, would be in the “quantity” group. They would be graded solely on the amount of work they produced. On the final day of class, he would tally the number of photos submitted by each student. One hundred photos would rate an A, ninety photos a B, eighty photos a C, and so on.
Meanwhile, everyone on the right side of the room would be in the “quality” group. They would be graded only on the excellence of their work. They would only need to produce one photo during the semester, but to get an A, it had to be a nearly perfect image.
At the end of the term, he was surprised to find that all the best photos were produced by the quantity group. During the semester, these students were busy taking photos, experimenting with composition and lighting, testing out various methods in the darkroom, and learning from their mistakes. In the process of creating hundreds of photos, they honed their skills. Meanwhile, the quality group sat around speculating about perfection. In the end, they had little to show for their efforts other than unverified theories and one mediocre photo.
To read more about the power of repetition, click here.
Quality comes with quantity and the more we shoot the more we perfect our skills. When I’m on photo assignments I’ll often shoot 1,000+ shots a day. Of course only a fraction of those shots are good but the act of repetition leads to perfection. Below is a carousel of images from a 9-day November sheep hunt in Alberta. I took nearly 12,000 images on this hunt. These are some of my favorites.
