Among photographers, there is a wide range of variability regarding the number of times they hit the shutter button as they attempt to photograph a particular subject. Some people will find a flower, take a photo or two of it, and then move on. More experienced photographers (broadly speaking) tend to spend more time with, and take a lot more photos of that same flower. Then, they’re likely to find other similar flowers nearby and try various compositions and perspectives with those as well.

I definitely fall into the second category. If I come across a potential photo subject, I usually dive in and test lots of ideas and angles as I strive to capture the essence of what initially caught my eye about the subject. That usually means I come home with hundreds of images of the same flower, insect, seed, or whatever. I have to spend a lot of time sorting through all those images, of course, to find the ones I like best, but it’s almost always worth it.

Often, the image I like best will be the 23rd or 57th one I took. It’s almost never the first or second. I could probably spend more time sitting back and thinking about possibilities instead of just shooting as I think, but for my particular brain, the ‘shooting-while-thinking’ method seems to work better. It engages my creativity in an important way. Here’s an example from this week of what that looks like:

I took the above photo at our family prairie last weekend. It’s nice enough. But that image is only one of at least a hundred I took while lying on the ground next to that sideoats grama plant. The breeze was moving the pappus around, so I I needed multiple chances to catch it in an attractive ‘pose’, and also to make sure it was in sharp focus in at least a few photos.

Eventually, I also tried lowering the camera even more (using my recently-modified tripod legs, of course) to get a little sky in the background. After I took several dozen shots from that angle, I tried a few more before eventually moving about 6 feet away to photograph some different sideoats grama plants.

Later, I used a software application called ‘Photo Mechanic’ to browse through all those thistle/sideoats images, mark the ones that were at least sharp, and sort off and delete all the others. From the remaining 30-40 sharp images, I then sorted (using a color coded system) them again to find the handful that I liked the most. I didn’t worry about picking a single favorite – I just worked up (with Photoshop) and saved that handful. None of them are world-changing images, but I like them all pretty well. I’m glad I played with multiple ideas.

When I moved on to some other sideoats grama plants, I followed the same basic procedure, though I didn’t have to worry about the lightweight thistle pappus twisting in the wind anymore. I still took a few dozen shots of each seed head that looked interesting to me and sorted them all out later.

There’s no right or wrong way to be a photographer, but if you’re someone who tends to take a photo or two of something and then move on, I’d encourage you to at least try staying longer and clicking away more. Doing so gives you a chance to evolve your thinking about how to best portray the scene. In many cases, it also helps ensure that you get at least one useable shot that isn’t blurry, especially when there’s a breeze.

Digital photography makes it much easier to justify all those photos because they don’t really cost anything. In the old days, when we had to buy film and get it processed, those multiple shots came at a price. I still took multiple photos, but certainly not as many as I do these days. Today, the biggest issue is forcing myself to delete the vast majority of my images. I always get rid of the blurry or otherwise, useless ones, but I do tend to keep more of the ‘decent’ ones than I’d really need to. I mean, who knows? Maybe I’ll use them someday! (I’m never going to use them.)