A year ago I brought home a new Canon T6i. I've been out on any number of photo trips, some hosted by my buddy the famous Neil Zeller, some with other less famous buddies, and some by my not famous at all self. If I believe the image file numbers I've taken just under 20,000 photos this year. That comes to about 50 a day.
All the trips have been fun. The furthest is down to Waterton Park. Some of been as close as our back yard or even inside the house, but I guess they don't count as trips. But the photography itself has been more fun than I had imagined it would be. The camera sees things differently than our eyes do, which has been a learning experience in so many ways. I see the world differently now. I think about composition, and lines and shapes and colour. Even when I'm looking at a flower, I'm realizing there is stuff there I can't see. Plants are surprisingly hairy.
Lots of photos get a big X on first view and they get trashed. There's been about 1000 of them since I last deleted a bunch.
Most are so-so for whatever reason and nothing happens to them.
Some (about 4100 so far) get one star and I look at them again and decide what to edit. I might go back and edit for something else, or someone might happen to see it and like it. Hey, it's happened.
Editing a photo gives it 3 stars (Not quite 1100 of those). These are the ones I'd show people if asked. Lots make it onto the blog.
Then we get into the good ones.
There are 212 with 4 stars. These are ones I like a lot for whatever reason.
There are 55 with 5 stars. These are my WOW! shots.
You can do the math on the percentages in each group. I'm always striving to better myself, knowing that on average 1 in every 400 shots is a Wow. The more shots you take, as long as you are honing your abilities, the more good shots you'll get. You can see lots of my 4 and 5 star shots here, if you haven't looked already.
Some days are better than others. One morning I was up on Tom Campbell hill shooting skyline and I was so disappointed when I got home that only a few of them were in focus. They looked ok in camera. Turned out it was a gusty day and the tripod was moving ever so slightly. That's all it takes.
Today was a great day! I was out this morning with good light and no wind. I put all the extension tubes on the 100 mm macro lens and captured 167 shots. Some were hand held with one tube instead of three. Imagine my astonishment when my initial pass gave me 87 with one star! More than half! Of course, I downgraded some of them when I looked more closely.
I still ended up editing 20 shots, which is a huge percentage for this kind of photography. Here's a few of them, including more hairy ant butts! These are on our peonies. If you look carefully there are two different species.
Here's another random bug I found. No idea what it is.
These creatures are MAGNIFICENT!
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