An article on PetaPixel by Jeremy Gray has introduced me to grid.photo, a project by Greg Boratyn where users are allowed to post one photo per day.
The limitation is meant to force photographers to only upload their best work, unlike most photo sharing sites where you can post hundreds of images in a day if you want. (Granted, some of them charge for certain volumes of uploads.)
The premise is neat, and though I’ve stopped uploading most of my own photos due to AI scraping nonsense I really hope grid.photo takes off. (You should really read the article, it goes into background not evident from just visiting the site.)
It makes me think about quality vs. quantity in regards to photography. Back in the day [cue old man yelling at cloud voice], if I was fortunate I’d have a roll of 36 possible shots. Not being independently wealthy, I quickly learned I needed to make each one count. I won’t say I managed that, but I spent a lot more time focusing (pun intended) on making each shot as good as possible.
When digital came around, my photos became effectively free. I could take hundreds, maybe thousands (OK, usually only hundreds) of shots in a single outing, deleting all of the superfluous ones.
Or, frequently, sharing 20 shots of the same thing because the photos were near-identical and I couldn’t decide which was “best.”
My father, who bought the first digital camera I ever got to use (a Sony Mavica, if you must know…), occasionally complains about this. He’s certain the way he and I learned photography is better, because of the thought we had to put into each shutter press.
I disagree.
The thought needs to be there, yes, but from the time I pressed the shutter to when I got to see the prints, I often forgot the tiny details I needed to know to make the lesson valuable. Sure, I could have spent my time with the camera taking detailed notes about the aperture, shutter speed, ambient light, and how I was holding the camera, but instead i was spending my time actively taking photos.
My ADHD brain was not going to stand for note taking on a photo excursion when there were pictures that needed taking.
Sure, I sped up the process when I had access to the campus dark room, but that was still enough of a delay for my brain to reset and wipe short term memory.
With most digital cameras (I see you, Camp Snap, and love you for what you are), you get instant gratification, yes, but also instant data.
That shutter speed is too slow.
This image is too dark.
My depth of field isn’t deep (or shallow) enough.
Oh, look, a histogram.
Getting this information instantly helps me learn immediately if what I’m doing is a correct choice or off base, so I can make adjustments and (hopefully) score better results.
It means I can have students internalizing key photography elements in one day instead of a week or more.
There’s a couple downsides, of course.
When you enable instant gratification you enable an instant pause on taking more shots. It’s easy for a beginner to overthink settings and stare at that little LCD, wondering what needs tinkering until they’re out of time.
When you enable infinite (or close enough) capacity you enable a surplus of identical shots, making weeding through them a more difficult process.
You’d think these two problems would cancel each other out, and sometimes they do. Most times, the pendulum swings hard in one direction or another.
And then, of course, there’s the student who’s told to hand in their “best 10 shots” so they take exactly 10 shots and call it a day. It’s OK, I get it. They don’t actually want to be a photographer, they just picked the lesson they thought was easy.
I still grade it like they took 100 and picked the best 10, though, so they’d better have a very good eye for composition.
