Here’s a sign that I’ve been spending too much time in meetings, and not enough time working on science projects. Apparently, I’m getting a little desperate for some data to analyze…
The other night, I found myself idly wondering how many photos I take in a year. “What the heck,” I thought, and went back through my files and counted the number of photos I took in 2012.
. Total # of photos taken in 2012 = 11,151
This image of prairie four o’clock (Mirabilis nyctaginea) was one of about 310 photos I took on June 7, 2012.
Then, because I’m a huge dork, I looked at the “data” in a few different ways..
. 70 photo batches from 2012
. # of photos per batch ranged from 2 to 469.
. Average # photos/batch = 159
Of course, not all of those photos were good enough to keep. I often take 3-4 shots of a particular composition to make sure I get the light, depth of field, sharpness, etc. just right. I also often try several different compositions of each subject because I’m not sure which I like best at the time. As a result, I end up doing a lot of sorting through photos to pick out the ones I actually like enough to keep and use for publications or other projects.
. # of “keeper” photos in 2012 = 1,071
Here’s another photo from the same day as the image above. This one is a dogbane beetle on a dogbane plant. June 7 was a pretty good day – not only did I shoot over 300 images, I ended up with 62 keepers – about a 5:1 ratio. (Can you believe I went through the trouble to figure that out??)
The ratio of all photos to keeper photos in 2012 was about 10:1. Interestingly, I think that’s about the same ratio as when I first started getting serious about photography in the early 1990’s. I was shooting slide film then, and always figured I was doing pretty well if I could get 3-4 publishable images out of a roll of 36 slides.
Since I was on a roll, and weirdly enjoying the process, I decided to look at how many “keepers” I’d taken in a couple other years - to see if the number was similar between years.
. # of Keeper Photos from:
. 2011 – 957
. 2010 – 913
. 2009 – 1,113
I did NOT go back and count ALL the photos I’d taken in the years 2009-2011. (That would just be crazy.) I also didn’t take the time to graph the results – - though I admit to considering it…
What does all of this mean? Not a dang thing, really, but it gave my data-loving brain something to occupy it for about an hour. Maybe tonight I’ll count how many times I chew my food at supper or something…
Boy, I hope the field season comes soon.
If you want to see a sample of some of my favorite “keeper” photos from 2012, you can click here to see my December 19 post, which included my best photos from the year.
