Choosing the photo from series

[jakconly]

Sometimes happens to me to shoot a series of portrait photos to be sure to get a perfect shot. No accidental blinking, weird random light reflection, flying pice of dust that made autofocus go crazy or anything equally improbable that might ruin a photo. So now i end up with a few shots made in less than a second. I sort out good photos and end up with almost identical photos and a decision to make. Which to choose? I can analyze every photo and find the best but it takes time and does not give any real benefit so I just choose random. Do you have any experiences? Preferences? Maybe there is some magical dependency like say "people smile more naturally in the begining of the series" or something like that. Maybe I'll learn something interesting.

I think it's the kind of question without one answer, thus I'm asking for your opinion.

It is not imortant, it's just my curiosity.

[BobVonBob]

In my experience there is no rule to choosing photos, if you want the best photo you have to pick through all of them.

 

There are definitely exceptions. If a bird flew through the photo you can probably rule out those ones, or if you sat there taking hundreds of pictures of the same pose for 5 minutes the last 4 minutes probably aren't good because everyone is preoccupied with hating you, but in normal circumstances I don't think there's a shortcut.

[YellowJersey]

One thing that might help is rating any pictures you think look good on the back of the camera as soon as you take them. Most cameras have some sort of rating feature. That helped me sort through mine.

[Radium_Angel]

Opinion:

In the day and age of dSLRs where you can take hundreds of shots (or more) on one memory card, it encourages sloppy work.

Instead of taking X number of shots of something, pretend the memory card holds only 24 exposures, as in the film days.

It will force you to really think about what you are taking, and slowing down to analyze things before hitting the shutter button.

 

I did this when starting out (also helped I started shooting in the film days when each shot cost money to take) and it made me a much better photographer.

I currently have a studio and work with people (well..full disclaimer, I'm a fetish photographer) and depending on the "scenario" there may be only one or two shots in any given pose.

 

This also saves time in any post work as well.

[jakconly]

On 12/11/2021 at 12:40 PM, Radium_Angel said:

Opinion:

In the day and age of dSLRs where you can take hundreds of shots (or more) on one memory card, it encourages sloppy work.

Instead of taking X number of shots of something, pretend the memory card holds only 24 exposures, as in the film days.

It will force you to really think about what you are taking, and slowing down to analyze things before hitting the shutter button.

 

I did this when starting out (also helped I started shooting in the film days when each shot cost money to take) and it made me a much better photographer.

I currently have a studio and work with people (well..full disclaimer, I'm a fetish photographer) and depending on the "scenario" there may be only one or two shots in any given pose.

 

This also saves time in any post work as well.

I totally agree that there's nothing better than learning on physical film... I'm to young to be ever limited by digital photohraphy not existing yet, and I regret that I wasn't forced by anyone to begin with film.

Now that I'm already spoiled by almost unlimitet capacity of SD card I try to use it as replacement for my lack of experience and hardware. Nevertheless I think I did develop a habit of thinking what I'm doing, so multiple photos that i take are not multiple tries of similar poses with multiple angles. It's rather ensuring that this one shot will meet the quality demand.

I want to add that i take more photos when I can't quite control environment: on the event, with low light and unpredictable people, or with kids that do A LOT more unexpected weird things than model in studio.