Firstly, great feeling to visit your site, refreshing layout too :)

As to your thoughts on digital work-flows. Think that I was quite frightened by the turn of speed with the creative side of taking shots. As your graph might reflect; the surge of input at certain times of the year is natural, due to light and seasonal preferance.

Thought you have shown a certain consistancy in having uploaded reguarly, unlike me, who has just started at this siite. Yet what about that work-flow, I edit and work alote with PShop, as for me its stil half of the process with this tecnique. I do get frightened at the sheer amount one can take of a subject; almost feels that you can take from the cenerity of the subject itself at times., (one´s bound to turn out right) and (must move on) can always delete later. In the end you risk missing the moment that counts; to stop and feel - compairing to the mathodic loving process that Alan embrasses with his box-camera.
So in all, I would imagine that Pshop thankfully decreaces my choices in what is used published or thrown. My graph would be very week and low key I guess!

Realy enjoy your work, very similar interests it seems!

I’m JEALOUS of your Peru trip - that sounds fabulous. Are you shooting with RAW? That always eats up my memory cards like crazy. I’ve resolved to toting a laptop with me to offload. It’s almost full :o). We definitely do both capture so many details of a culture and place, I can’t wait to see what you turn up with!

For people portraits, I try to take multiple shots, but oftentimes I get very uncomfortable and timid after the first few so even some of my best shots of people have usually only been “that” one. I really need to change that policy, I’m sure I’d get a lot more beautiful ones, but for now this is how I temper my nosiness into people’s lives :o).

It sounds as though our digital numbers are pretty similar. I’m off to Peru for 3 weeks at the end of June and I’m currently stocking up on memory cards as I’m sure I√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ll be taking pictures by the thousands. Although these numbers are large, I think a lot of it has to do with the subject matter. For instance, you and I both seem to like to capture little details and it’s hard not to take pictures when there are soo many of them! ;) What about with your portraits - do you always get the perfect smile the first time or do you usually take a few shots per person?

As I’ve gotten more and more comfortable with digital, I’ve taken more photos, almost exponentially. When I lived in Argentina for 6 weeks in 2003, I shot around 200 images in digital (and maybe 15 rolls of color). When I went to Greece last Spring for 9 days, I took about 800 pictures. My latest trip to Vietnam (2 weeks), I took over 2,000 images.

My problem is editing. I have trouble deciding what should be posted and what shouldn’t. Over time my pictures are improving and I’m discovering more and more images I want to share - besides the obvious “wow” ones. I was looking at some friend’s streams and their total collection averages 700 images. I’m over 2,000 - is that embarassing or what? :o).

Part of the problem is that I’m trying to tell a story with my travel images, so I feel I want to accurately chronicle my life. I know my friends and family visit flickr to learn about my travels, so I don’t skimp there. I’m a lot better than I used to be, where I used to post any decent photo, and 25 at a time. It doesn’t make it easy that access to internet here is so limited and I’d do a lot more photo-ing stuff if I had internet at home after work, but I’m making do.

I think this was a bit of a ramble, but I thought I’d throw in my meanderings anyhow :o).

Guido – thank you for sharing your thoughts. It is interesting to hear about all of your picture taking experiences, and you’ve had many wonderful ones all around the world by the looks of it. I was especially interested to hear about your experiences with film as I have very little experience with that medium. For the most part though, it sounds as though going digital has increased the kinds of pictures you take and the number of pictures you share – both of which sound (and look) like good things to me. :)

Steve – glad to hear that I’m not the only one who has played around with these numbers. ;) From what you and others have said, it seems as though digital photography allows for more opportunities for experimentation which is a positive thing. I couldn’t agree with you more about the wonderful world of Flickr. Being part of Flickr these past few months has been an inspiring experience for me as well. Not only is it filled with wonderful pictures, but there are wonderful people behind those pictures who offer encouragement and support.

I’ve gotta say that I just love Flickr though. Getting instant recognition, appreciation, learning from others whose photos I admire, and being inspired by the amazing diversity of the styles and viewpoints of other Flickr users is an incredible experience! I could read 5 “how to take better pictures” books or spend an hour on Flickr browsing through great shots and seeing what about each picture other people like and dislike. I feel I get a lot more out of Flickr!

Still, I know that the numbers of pictures taken has exponentially increased. So what about quality and quantity in my case?

Namibia was my first trip where I did more than just occasionally shoot some pictures. In four weeks, I did about 30 rolls of film, i.e. about 1000 shots. That was in 1991. Of those I kept about 100 slides as “favorites” - I scanned about 20 of them for my private website. This does not mean, that I would consider only 10% as good enough to keep or 2% as “sharable”. Because: taking widelife photos by definition generates a lot of excess photos and going through the hassle of scanning etc. also reduces the number of pictures collected or shared. The number of pictures taken is not ncessarily defined by Digital or Film per se but also by what pictures you take. But true: digital photography in my case INCREASED the number of pictures taken.

Same for Street Photography. I only started to do some street photography since I went digital. I first did so when visiting Maroco in Dec 2004, in spring 2005 in Zurich and again in China in late 2005 (see my flickr sets for all of them). The number of shots taken has exploded, but I guess, I also did some pictures that I would not have tried to do on Film. The chance of getting a particular shot right at the first time was just to small (e.g. of some motion blurred street life). Hence, does digital photography INCREASE the opportunities to do a decent pictures?

Another indicator is time spend working with pictures. Usually, the slides I made when travelling kept me busy for a couple of evenings. Sitting bended over my lightbox and sorting out the good and bad ones was a rather fast processes. Totally different now: it took me ages to sort out the slides from Maroco and China (although in the latter case, pictures taken with my broken camera required a little bit more postprocessing). Sure this extra time spend with my digital photos is caused by about factor 10 of pictures taken (I did a couple of thousands in China). Still, the biggest difference was not just numbers of pictures taken. It was the time a spend PER PICTURE taken. I could easily “safe” a picture I would have thrown away if it would be on Film. Hence, digital photography in certain cases INCREASES the share of usable pictures.

And then, on the other side, I often hear myself complaining that since I use my digital camera, I do not take enough time to “think” about a picture, that the quality of pictures taken has decreased. Is this really true? Thinking about it, I come to another conclusion: I do MORE pictures, I take new sorts of pictures I wouldn’t have taken before and amongst them there are MORE pictures I would consider sharable. But, I have do admit that for “regular” motifs, the quality of “in-camera” pictures has declined. The latter however, is often compensated by postprocessing/photoshopping such pictures. In addition, I realize that from a single picture I often “produce” 2 or 3 pictures in different tones or with different cropping, each special in its own way. Hence, the quality and share of usable “in-PC” pictures not necessarily declined.

And my last comment: I was always interested in doing B/Ws. Still, setting up a dark-room, mixing chemicals and handling paper was beyond my scope as a “amateur photographer”. All different now: I very often do B/Ws of my color pictures and, what is more important, I started to think B/W when taking some pictures.

Hmm, guess that’s it. Not very structured, just some thoughts about the editing and creative process in my particular case. In a nutshell: numbers of pictures increased expontentially, time spent for editing too. On the other hand, now take pictures I wouldn’t have before and by taking more pictures and reviewing them more carefully also improved my own photoskills (I hope).

Wishes,
Guido

PS: your photostream is absolutely stunning!!