Ok, it’s confession time.  I’m a photographer and I take a lot of bad photographs.  I still make lots of them even to this day.  It doesn’t matter so much to me as it did before.  It used to be a huge source of stress to me but it is no longer.

When I go out into the field for a nature or a landscape shot, I can guarantee that I’m going to be taking dozens to hundreds of different exposures out there.  I could even fill up a memory card or two chasing different shots.  Most of these photos won’t be worth anything.  One or two might be.

When I go into my mini studio for a fine art shot, I can guarantee that I will be taking several exposures of the same image to get just the right shot.  Lighting, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and several different settings are tweaked into perfection there by trial and error.  All this for one shot I plan on using.

I’m lucky to come out of such a photo shoot with more than five images which I think might be worth processing.  Of those five or so images, more times than not, I end up discarding most if not all of them.  They simply don’t meet up to the standards I want.

I take blurry photos, out of focus photos, poorly exposed photos, wrong-subject-in-focus photos, something-was-in-the-way-of-my-subject photos, and many more kinds of failed images.  None of these are suitable for a professional photographer’s portfolio.  This used to be a huge disappointment but it doesn’t bother me much anymore.

I’ve learned that it’s ok to take bad photographs.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with coming back from a photo shoot, with no less than a two hour drive one-way, and not having a single usable image.  This happens a lot.  It doesn’t mean that I’m a failure.  It simply means I have high standards.  Without these high standards, I can never grow as a photographer.

So, if you are getting discouraged by the number of poor quality photographs that you take, don’t fret.  Take it as a learning and a growing experience.  It won’t be easy to do so.  I know.  But it will allow you to improve over time.  With patience, you will be able to start taking the kind of photographs you want to, even with all the bad ones thrown in the mix.  Don’t give up.