CCC Forum

Q: How many photographs did Lewis Carroll (the pen name of Charles Dodgson) take in his lifetime?

A: Around 2,600

Q: How many photographs did you take last year?

According to Lightroom, my total was around 10,000. I cannot be certain of the exact number, since Lightroom includes virtual copies. The figure was something of a surprise, as I did not think that I had done much photography in 2017. Technology has certainly made it easier to obtain an image, but I doubt if my hit rate of successful images approached the ratio achieved by Lewis Carroll and the other early pioneers of the medium.

A smart collection with "Copy Name" set to "is empty" should exclude virtual copies, plus the "File Type" filter to exclude any non-raw imports.

That's still inflated by bracketed images which I'd count as a single photo in multiple files, but that isn't easily filterable.

I'm also surprised at the number of photos I took last year - around 2,000 is more than I'd have guessed - even with half of those being casual photos taken at family or work events.

For each of the previous two years, I took around 4k - slightly above my average of 3.7k.

I've been trying to work out if there's a meaningful way to calculate hit rate - it'd be interesting to know if/how that has increased over the years - but I can't figure out even a crude way that works against my library.
The closest thing might be if Lightroom allowed counting files which have been exported, but it doesn't appear to store that information at the library level.

How does that compare when you were shoting film?

Peter Boughton wrote:A smart collection with "Copy Name" set to "is empty" should exclude virtual copies, plus the "File Type" filter to exclude any non-raw imports.

That's still inflated by bracketed images which I'd count as a single photo in multiple files, but that isn't easily filterable.

Thanks, Peter, that is a useful tip. I do not have a preoccupation with the actual number of images other than as an indication of activity. Based on the crude measure of a Lightroom count, 2017 was exceeded only by 2013 when I did my photo-a-day project. Looking at my images, there are two signficant factors which contributed to the increase. One was attending the match at Sarah's hockey club last March where I was shooting short bursts. The other was the birth at the end of 2016 of my first grandchild. Without those two events, 2017 would have been similar to most other years in terms of photos taken.

Whereas I suspect that the majority, if not all, of our Victorian forebears' exposures resulted in a print, only around 1% of my output ever gets further than a quick review in Lightroom. Some end up in my blog and/or become competition images. Others I might incorporate into presentations. Family shots are more often than not shared by social media and rarely result in a print.

The hockey match is a case in point. I took around 1400 images, which is as many as I have ever taken in a single session. It resulted in around 80-90 passable images. I printed one recently for a club competition and thought it would be OK. The judge was singularly unimpressed. It featured two players and he wanted to see three.* Out of everything I took that day, one was a standout. And yes, it did feature three people. I entered it into an external competition and it did tolerably well. Not brilliantly, but was singled out for a commendation. It has also just become one of my acceptances in the colour print section of the SPA Biennial Exhibition. It will make it to the club one day.

If I had been carefully making exposures, would I have got the shot? Possibly. I only started a sequence of shots when something interesting happened and the first was usually the best. The others were insurance in case the action developed into something more interesting. It is also possible that I would have missed it, especially if every shot was at the cost of film and reloading was necessary every 36 shot. So, 1400 exposures for one usable shot? Worth it in my book.

* Judges. You have to love them. Especially when they do not critique the presented photo and say that they want something different.