Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop. – Ansel Adams

It’s my goal, at least in these initial secrets to better motorcycle pictures, to give you them in order of their ability to transform your photos. Keeping your perspective low, using the Rule of Thirds and knowing your subject will make a huge difference in your photography. This next secret though you may not think is all that  importance when compared to the other three. But I’m ranking it fourth because I believe it is a secret that can really make a difference in your photos as well as have some very practical implications.

The third secret to better photos is to take more photos—hundreds, even thousands at your next outing. More when it comes to photography is always better than less. If you don’t follow this secret the other three wont help you. In fact nothing I will tell you after this will be of much use because it really does take a lot of photos to get one great one no matter what you know.

I’m calling all these composition rules secrets, but in reality all of them are pretty well known. I just give them a little bit of a different slant because I’m primarily talking about motorcycles pictures at this point. But this one secret I’m telling you now truly is a secret or at least as close as I will probably come to a secret.

I think amateur photographers sometimes think that because a professional has had some training, or uses expensive gear, or has a crew of people, or for whatever reason, they just go out and nearly every shot they take is a keeper. This is however far from the truth. I’ve taken thousands of photos over the last few years and really only have a hand-full I would call great photos. Photography in many ways is a numbers game. When you see a professionals portfolio, or work in a gallery, it represents thousands and thousands of photos that have been taken over probably many years. Scott Kelby in his book “The Digital Photography Book, Vol. 3” says if you were to go out on a photo shoot and take 240 pictures and you got one great photo you would be doing good. He says, “A lot of folk are surprised (actually shocked) to learn that even most pros would be happy to come away with one really great shot from that 240.”

So what are the practical implications of this? Number one I think is don’t get discouraged if you go out and take several hundred photos and you only have one or two good ones. Even the pros have this kind of success rate. Number two obviously is to take a lot of photos. But not only that if you’re doing a shoot for someone make sure you don’t rely on just one location, have two, three or even four places lined up. I’ve found many times what I thought would be a great place to shoot just didn’t work for one reason or another, while another did. So plan on your percentages being low and take a lot of pictures from every angle you can, with every lens you have or can borrow or rent, in every location you can.

Photographer: Tim Wemple

Photographer: Tim Wemple

These two photos that I wanted to promote my website took 195 shots to get. That really is a pretty good ratio. My fellow photographer Don Leow and I started out though at another location I thought would work. It didn’t and if I hadn’t planned on going to two locations that day we wouldn’t have gotten any usable photos.  So if you’re going out to do a photo shoot I recommend always having at least, at the bare minimum, two places to take your photos.  At Daytona I took over a thousand photographs and really feel I only have four or five great shots. That’s just the reality of this business. What you find is being a photographer is kind of like panning for gold. You have to look through a lot of fools gold to find the real deal. I hope as we go through these secrets that you will be training your eye not only to take good photos, but to spot them too. A lot of what you will be doing is looking through mediocre photos at best looking for good ones and that is often were the real artistry comes into play. You have to know and be able to pick out good photos.

One more thought before leaving this subject. Why do you think that this information is not common knowledge and very nearly a secret? It’s because professional photographers don’t show their average photos to people, all we see are the great ones. I’ve heard it said, and truly believe it, that a photographer is always judged by their worst shot. If you want to be known as a good photographer make sure you keep your portfolio to your absolute best. When it comes to a portfolio less not more should be our motto. It can be hard, taking photos out is not what we like to do, but believe me it has to be done and every photographer needs to do it more, I know I do.

By Tim Wemple © 2010
www.BikeRallyPhotography.com
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