Quality vs Quantity: Why I Return Home with Fewer Photos
I used to measure a good photo walk by how many frames I came home with. A 300 to 500 or more shots felt productive. A couple of months ago, I decided to slow down: to focus more on quality, intention, and storytelling. The result has been fewer clicks, better images, and an unexpected tension: walking home with less to show for the time spent, and wondering if I’ve gone too far in the other direction.
The Comfort of Volume
Up to recently I would go out and shoot 200 to 500 shots in a three to four hour walk around the city. Anything that would catch my eye would result in a shutter click. I would take the shot without thinking about the story, the composition, or the aesthetic of the shot.
I didn't want to miss anything, even if at the moment I took the shot I knew that it was unlikely to survive the cull that would happen when I got home.
I would get home, and it would take a long time to cull my shots. When shooting without intention and at volume this meant that I needed to take a moment to look at every single shot I took and evaluate whether to keep it or not. This took a lot of time and was hard to do.
I hated culling. There had to be a better way!
Fewer Shots: Both More and Less Pressure
More intention means fewer shots and less time culling. Every frame on my memory card was taken purposefully and belongs there. Now that I come home with fewer photos, I no longer procrastinate and avoid the process of culling. The pressure is gone.
I feel a new kind of pressure from the fact that even though my shots are more intentional and I'm focusing on composition and story telling in the moment, when I review the photos I took I'm still have a keeper rate of less than 2% which was about what I had before. Previously when shooting 500 frames a day that would mean 10 keepers, but now I often finish the day with less than 50 shots and that means one or or zero keepers.
It's frustrating to return home with nothing to share or only one shot to share for the week.
There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph.
Learning to Trust the Process
Despite the frustration at returning home with fewer keepers or bangers, I am starting to see that fewer photos doesn’t mean less progress. The quality and visual impact is changing, but on a slower timeline than I hoped.
Progress isn’t measured in immediate hits, but in a steadier thread of intention that shows up over time. When I flip back through recent walks, there’s a quiet consistency there now — frames that feel purposeful, moments that speak for themselves, and a body of work that feels more connected and an expression of who I am as a photographer.
So I keep walking, looking for the moment or story worth shooting. And learning that patience quietly reshapes what I see.
Suggested Articles
