Ahhhhh, all the failures inbetween the "keepers"!

[chris jordan]

Dang, you know the longer I spend as a photographer, and the more I think I have honed my vision, the more lessons I receive in what a novice I still am. I always think that after some amount of decades shooting, my success ratio will improve to where most of the photos I take will be keepers, especially working with large format. But but then I go out and shoot twenty sheets of film and the whole friggin pile is a bunch of junk! I've done it two days in a row now-- the cost of all of that would have added up to a couple of round trip tickets to Mexico.

This is something I've asked many famous photographers about over the years-- Michael Kenna, Richard Misrach, Keith Carter and some others, as well as read about in various books, and everyone's answer is the same: We're all in the same boat and it never gets any better! Richard Misrach told me that back when he was doing his Desert Cantos work, he was shooting 1500 sheets of 8x10 film per year. Keith Carter shoots incredible amounts of medium format film, with the ambitious goal of getting one keeper per day. Michael Kenna says you wouldn't believe some of the junk he produces inbetween the ones he likes. Richard Avedon shoots something like 200 sheets of 8x10 film in a single portrait sitting to get the one he wants-- he actually has two full-time assistants whose entire job is to load film in the camera. I guess maybe this process is a reflection not so much of any lack of skill or vision, but of a constantly evolving vision combined with high standards.

Ahhhh, okay then, just saying that helps charge my battery back up, so it's back to the trenches; happy Friday to you all.

www.chrisjordan.com

[James Phillips]

Great ... Thanks Chris.

If " 1500 sheets of 8x10 film per year" that translates for me in 4x5 format to about one good shot every three years !

Yikes !

Now I'm really down : > ((

Maybe I do need the digital format 35mm camera where I can erase as fast as I shoot. :>)

Kind Regards,

[tim atherton]

I'm trying to remember exactly which one of these three said it (though the other two present concurred, in vigorous agreement), but good few years ago when I was on a workshop where Elliot Erwitt, Bill Allard and Alex Webb were all talking at one of the evening shows, I think it was Erwitt who said if he got two real keepers a year he was happy, and that was about his average. Yes, he took lots of good pictures, but he pointed out that if you looked at the lifetime work of even most of the very best of the greats from the past, of their really memorable, long lasting, best images, their batting average was usually pretty close to that. His theory was that what made the difference with good photographers, as that their "seconds" where generally more consistently better than average, so there was plenty of decent filler to go in between those ground breaking shots!

[Philippe Gauthier]

I'd like to be able to consistently shoot Ellio Erwitt's "decent fillers"... Yes, I feel pretty much as you do, Chris. Add to that that I consider most of my "keepers" shot 2-3 years ago as junk and you'll understand that I haven't much to show. I mean, stuff that is really worthwhile.

Still, I feel that my proportion of "decent filler" (which is not as good as Erwitt's) is improving over time. And that maybe some of my best shots of 2003 will stand the test of time for at least a couple of years!

[Eric Rose]

In my chats with Bruce Barnbaum he figures if he gets 7 really good images a year he is doing well. He is out shooting all the time, so I don't feel so bad.

[Andy tymon]

Hey Chris, I think we all go through this, photography bite at times like this! If Ansel adams made 40,000 negs and got about 25 classic images,this means I should get my first good shot in about 5 years time, I guess it's something to look forward to:). Maybe you could discuss your recent lack of success with a photographer who's work you respect. Sometimes we are so close to the work we can't see it's good points or were the concept and it's execution went in opposite directions.I know if I try to make a picture, say a still life I always fail, but I can go out and find a landscape,by literally stumbling upon it.

Remember practice makes perfect,and in photography it also makes you pockets lighter! good luck

[Mark_3632]

Good to know andy, I was needing a new belt. Now I can tell the wife I just need to shoot more pictures and my pants won't succumb to the effects of gravity. It'll work!

As for a keeper. I am not sure I'ld know one if it bit me in the butt.

[Chad Jarvis]

How altruistic, Michael, but each of us is his own worst critic and as such, has his own definition of "keeper".

[Bob Fowler]

"Richard Avedon shoots something like 200 sheets of 8x10 film in a single portrait sitting to get the one he wants-- he actually has two full-time assistants whose entire job is to load film in the camera."

200 sheets in a sitting to get the one he wants? If that's true, he just moved down a notch or two on my list. If you can't get THE image by 150 sheets, you're nuthin'! :-)

hehehe

[tim atherton]

""Richard Avedon shoots something like 200 sheets of 8x10 film in a single portrait sitting to get the one he wants-- he actually has two full-time assistants whose entire job is to load film in the camera." 200 sheets in a sitting to get the one he wants? If that's true, he just moved down a notch or two on my list. If you can't get THE image by 150 sheets, you're nuthin'! :-)"

Yeah, but who do you think is keeping Tri-X and Portra 400 in production singled handed... :-)

(is the latter still in production?)

[Donal Taylor]

very nice thoughts Michael, but I'm taking a wild guess here - photography doesn't pay your bills and put a roof over your head?

[tim atherton]

Another guess here Michael (just re-read your post - which does have a lot to it btw - it's actually a keeper) - you are a good photographer or artist but who brings in a cash crop from a successful day job? Academia? ;-)

Just wanted to practice my amateur psychonalaysis...

[tim atherton]

oh dear - a sense of humour failure - definately academia.

As I said, I liked your post, I've cut and pasted it and saved it to an email - there is vertainly something to it. But I doubt such thoughts were going through Weston's mind when he was seriously short of cash and trying to pay the bills - instead he went out and drummed up some portrait work and ran off some film - not usually his best work, but there you go.

Oh well, too many Friday afternoon sherrys - damned tripod keeps going all wobbly...

[chris jordan]

Ha! Great comments guys. Michael, your philosophy is wonderful in the abstract, and very in-the-moment (are you a student of Eckhart Tolle's writing by any chance-- I sure am-- the guy's a genius), but in practice it doesn't work like that for any photographer I know of. I am not aware of any photographic artist in the history of the medium who has not edited his own work mercilessly as part of the artistic process. For me the capture on film is just the first step-- the editing, cropping and all aspects of printing are equally important in the photographic process. There are guys like Art Wolfe who shoots 400 rolls of 35mm film in a day and every shot goes in his stock library, but that's a different category of work...

[Tom Westbrook]

Golly! I thnk Henry had it right in the other thread: must be cabin fever.

As for 'keepers', does it really matter? I mean, don't even average photographs work for clients just as well, if not better than ecxellent ones? I'm just wondering if a really excellent photograph would be too distracting for some (maybe most?) situations. Or would that vary by client or assignment type?

Curious.

[Ralph Barker]

Chris - great topic, and one that is decidedly durable, regardless of how many times we recycle it in comiseration.

Tim - gin is better than sherry. With gin, one doesn't notice the wobble. ;-)

[chris jordan]

Michael, by the way, you raise another really interesting issue in your post, which I thought I'd address since I'm sitting home today with bellows-thrashing 40-mph winds outside that prevent the work I had intended for today.

There is a whole school of photographic art that claims that every photo we take is a culmination and expression of our whole life up to that moment. I think I got that philosophy in your post-- was that what you meant? There is a corresponding school of painting that says every brush stroke by a genius is a work of genius, and thus they regard Picasso's most mundane studies as being profound works of art.

I must say I have never bought that whole concept-- it's a great idea but doesn't work in the real world. Take an example of someone who walks down the street firing a motor-drive camera at random without even looking through the viewfinder-- are all the photos just as good as each other, and does each photo reflect their whole life? (and if so, do the photos get better as he shoots, because the later photos reflect the extra few minutes of life he has lived while shooting)? And what if an old man and a young child did the same thing on the same street at the same time-- even if the photos were all similar, should they be seen as fundamentally different because of the two photographers' life experiences up to that moment? And what if you gave a brilliant Nobel-Peace-Prize winning physicist a camera and he shot a bunch of wank snapshots of his cat-- would the fact that he has lead a great life mean that those photos are great works of art? And what happens when I accidentally expose a frame of film when the camera is pointed at the ground; is this a work of art on par with my best work (hmmm, wait, don't answer that one...); and how about if you gave a child an auto-everything camera in Yosemite, loaded with Tri-X, and he happened to take a perfectly focussed and exposed killer photograph of Half Dome-- would that photo be somehow worse for the fact that it was taken by someone with minimal life's experience?

And what if I decide to take 20 photographs in a totally dark room, each photo separated by a year, and after 20 years I make 20 big black prints-- would each identical black square have different artistic value because my life's experience developed in the intervening 19 years? And what if I set up the tripod and my friend clicks the shutter-- whose life is the picture a culmination of?

Not that I'm expecting answers to all of these crazy questions-- I merely mean to illustrate that a theory like this (and in my opinion much of the philosophy behind the PoMo movement in general) is interesting to talk about over a glass of wine, but it doesn't actually hold much water when the rain starts falling.

~cj

[Bruce Watson]

The problem is, photography involves some estimation (stay with me here - even if it is a Friday afternoon.. ;-).

We have to look at a 3D scene (4D if the light/clouds/etc. is really moving), and estimate what it'll look like in 2D. We have to take a scene that our eyes continuously scan (and continuously change focus and aperture), and estimate what it'll look like as a photograph - taken all at once with a fixed angle of view, fixed focus, and fixed aperture.

There's a whole lot of abstraction going on. Even when we are "on" and doing great work, we can't hope to hit the mark very often because this level of abstraction is very complex. What we do basically is take our human visual/emotional capabilities, and pare away all but the most essential bits that can fit within the much smaller capabilities of the camera/film system.

What's really surprising to me, is that we can do this at all. That some of us can get a truly good photograph 6-12 times a year is nearly miraculous. Rather than worry about the ones that got away, we should celebrate the ones we catch.

[tim atherton]

Micahel,

Apologies - didn't mean that to sound harsh - I am also just a moderately okay photographer who makes his living from a mixture of assignments and (for want of a better word) "art" photography. I have a good friend who teaches photography at University - he's always ribbing me about all the freedom I have to do what I want - I'm always ribbing him about his long vacations, health benefits and tenure...

Tom, I'm not sure if Chris does commercial/editorial assignments or if he supports himself purely though art photography - galleries and commissions - I do both. Funny thing is, while I'm sure many clients probably would be happy with "just okay" shots I always find myself trying to produce the best for them. Like the assignment that came up last week I mentioned under the -40c Phillips 8x10 thread - it will unfortunately be a while until I see the film, but somewhere in the bleak open tundra of the Barren Lands or the massive open pit diamond mine or even the portrait of the menacing looking (though actually not menacing at all) diamond task force cop I have a good feeling that there is one image which will quite stand out. I'm not 100% sure which it was - and it may not be one the Creative Director picks. Because "In truth, when you are about to press the cable release, the image that you about to make is your only photograph, the one you are living at that moment" was the way I went about it - even though it was an editorial commission. For me it's really the only way to work, as well as to do my own personal photography.

[matthew blais]

Chris, first, I admire the work I've seen posted on your website. Did it involve several thousand sheets of film to come up with these images - ones, I assume you felt are "keepers"? I doubt it...

My point is, be inspired by your own work, the successes you've had and keep faith, forget all that other gunk about percentages. We all have to deal with good and bad, and, as I posted in JK's thread the other day, "sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn't". Fact of life.

I spent an entire day shooting inside an old (closed to public) mission annex (with MF). Ran 25+ rolls. Not one keeper. Didn't help that my cable release broke off inside the camera with shot #1, and most exposures were long. But I realized I was trying to make the most of my one day shoot as I had to jump a bunch of hoops to get in there, so I was "in a hurry". Saw way too much - but didn't "see" a damn thing. But I learned. And I'm going back someday.

And, todays junk is perhaps tomorrows find. You may like something later you thought was junk..you never know... fresh eyes, new perspective and all that.

[Bill_1856]

I made my first really great photo within a year of when I started seriously photographing (I was about 16), and my second one some 20 years later. Has anybody else noticed that it's usual to run through roll after roll of mundane photos, then suddenly there will be two or three keepers on a roll and they will be on adjoining frames.

[Peter Galea]

Yeah, Bill, Those adjoining keepers for me will usually be the brackets!

[Francis Abad]

I do not go on my 8x10 photo hikes with the added stress of needing to make A KEEPER. I go out to relax and I find that I make better pictures that way. I make a keeper (at least one) everytime I go out. I only contact print and I think that helps me see better. What is a keeper is entirely subjective. But over the last 5 months (and over 200 sheets of AZO later) I have had 20 keepers and they are pleasant to gaze at. But these are "mine". What others say I have only the slightest idea.

[paul stimac]

Chris, Responding to your very first post on this-

.... at least I'm not the only one.

Intermittent reinforcement, is a strong motivator. Smart people say that it's responsible for things like compulsive gambling. I see a connection between that, our low keeper ratios, and why we keep heading out with these big cameras.

[N Dhananjay]

Photography does not pay my bills, and I am in academia - oh dear, feel free to skip this response.....;-)

But seriously, folks. As much as we may dismiss such a theory as an abstraction without much applicability in the real world, we have to also acknowledge that the notion of a 'keeper' is a somewhat slippery concept. Most of us probably mean a happy coincidence of technique, mental state, seeing and external conditions (light, weather, expression etc). To this, one probably should add that it is also defined to a degree by public admiration (and our opinions about what constitutes the happy coincidence itself may be influenced by that). And I do not mean public admiration in the sense that the public decides which of our work are 'keepers'. What I mean is that we are influenced by those kinds of responses. How many of us feel that having made a Weston/Adams/Kenna makes it a keeper? Please note, I'm not saying we are unthinking imitators - merely that social influence colors our perceptions of what is a 'keeper' etc. And those influences are not static. This probably sounds strange only to artists (who are interested in self-expression) - a social psychologist would not find it strange at all - social influences are as powerful as they are insiduous. Let's take the work of say, Adams and Weston. Each of them probably has a couple of dozen images that are reproduced repeatedly and count as their 'classic images', their 'keepers' (and defines for many people what a 'keeper' is). But I'd bet every one of us has at least some other images from their entire body of work that we think is as good/better than the 'classics'.

My point (and I assure you I do have one) is that the notion of a 'keeper' is highly contextualized. How many of your keepers from 5 years ago would you keep? How much is your definition of 'keeper' influenced by current/prior notions about what constitutes a 'keeper'? The notion may be highly useful in certain areas (for example, if you were shooting for stock photography) but it may have absolutely no validity at all in other areas, even though it may exist in that area (for example, fine art) - in fact, it may actively get in the way. Yes, you want to be familiar with your materials, and technique should be instinct. And everything you make should be made with intensity and passion.

Is everything between the 'keepers' necessary for the 'keepers' to emerge? Probably, although I think it is an irrelevant question. I'm pretty convinced, though, that the notion of a 'keeper' will actively conspire with your mind to limit your 'seeing'. Which is not a bad thing - 'expertise', as defined by a cognitive psychologist, would be a limitation in perception, the ability to ignore the irrelevant. Whether that is good for the work you want to do, only you can decide.

Cheers, DJ

[Keith Laban]

On an average day I will take 1 or 2 shots, on a good day 3 to 5. Using 120 film I usually get 3 or 4 individual shots to the roll plus varying exposures. Of those 3 or 4 shots I reckon on one being a keeper, i.e. good enough for publication. In a year I reckon on getting 3 to 5 shots that I like enough to offer as prints. I’ve yet to take the perfect shot, probably never will, probably wouldn’t want to, as this is what motivates me to continue making images.

Mistakes are valuable, this is the way we learn and progress.

Keith Laban Photography (http://www.keithlaban.co.uk)

[Andre Noble]

Some of the responses about "keepers" is way too deep.

On a 12 Exp 120 roll for example, I get about 3 "keepers" - and a similar ratio with sheet film. The rest are either not optimally in focus, or not optimally exposed.

[Andre Noble]

PS: And none of them are worth publishing.

[tim atherton]

off-topic - please excuse this

Chris,

my posts in replay to you email about the exchange seem to be bouncing back again?

tim

[Steve J Murray]

Since this thread is still hanging on for dear life, I'll add to it. First, the "level" of what's a keeper varies from person to person. A pro who is getting paid lots of money for a great shot will probably use a lot of film to ensure he or she gets one worthy of his or her reputation. I think any person who has a natural artistic talent will not find it hard to take a good photograph--a keeper. Some keepers are better than others and are "great." Maybe Chris is talking about great photos. I find it pretty easy to get a few keepers on a roll. Shooting 4x5 almost all are keepers for me, since you can spend more time considering the shot before taking it. What becomes a great shot is really subjective. Just like many people who can sing well, play piano, draw pictures, etc., many talented photographers take keepers. But not all singers, pianists, artists, etc., do really exceptional work, and its the same for photographers. I'm pretty happy with my keepers and the occasional great photo I've done. I just wish I had more than an occasional hour or two in a month to take photos.

[Richard Fenner]

I haven't been around long enough to make clear judgements on how many keepers, but there are some thought here I agree with. The main one being, it depends on where you set your level! If by 'keeper' you mean publishable and would be accepted by a stock library, I think the threshold isn't too high - I've been on workshops with known photographers who will take well over a dozen 'keepers' in this sense, each workshop. Often more like a couple of dozen (although this includes different angles/formats of the same subject to sell in different ways). However, if you mean shots that really stand out each year, the shots that would find their way into your Best Of volume at some late point, these photographers generally believe 6-8 a year is a fair estimate.

I see so much rubbish in magazines, on websites etc, that I try to also maintain a high standard, which means I'm regularly throwing out shots that other workshop regulars like, and it's agonising to sort through shots when they come back from the lab.

This approach means you can be very hard on yourself, as well as on others - it's not unusual for me to flick through a David Muench book and think 'wouldn't have bothered printing that, or that' regularly - his volume of publishing seems to me to mean he needs a lower standard than some (although the 10 or thereabouts books by him on my shelves suggests I don't think he's that bad!); compare that with my impressions going through Burkett's book, or Dykinga's LF book, reading which I'm only occasionally saying 'I wouldn't have printed that'.

Still, I feel this harshness improves my output, as does reading more and more books.