Whats your keeper rate?

vt1122

Curious what others find they keep compared to shots taken.
Photographed a 4 game tounament this weekend. 766 shots taken, 464 keepers. Just over 60%.

A few from the Glastonbury Ct. Tournament.

1)



2)



3)



4)



5)



6)



7)



8)

Hindsight

100.1%

Ba'dum.

Speaking for myself, inevitably it's too high. I can't help myself, I'm a packrat and it's only reinforced when the bad ones sell.

[Deleted User]

It depends on what one decide is a keeper or not, I should imagine that it varys between every photographer based upon there ability................

Tim

SloYerRoll

About 20-25%.

I'm brutal when it comes to keepers though.

One time, my wife was in the room when I was culling shots and she get pretty upset about the ones I trashed. She said they were great, I thought they were mediocre at best (she's a professional photographer. I'm just an enthusiast).

Ironically, my keeper rate has actually decreased dramatically since I've learned to shoot better and gained more experience. There are allot of shots in my archives that I look at and have no idea why I didn't trash them as soon as I saw them.

To put it into more perspective:
David, this next statement says NOTHING about your photography, it only speaks of my retentive nature. Out of those shots you posted, I'd only keep one. But I also very rarely shoot sports and know very specifically what I want when looking at whether to keep or trash a picture.

Robinivich

Interesting thread!

Depends on what I shoot, not a lot of sports here either, it can be as little as 2% or practically 100%, but typically well under half (15-20% sounds about right). I'm a perfectionist, which is a difficult and stupid thing to be with any kind of art, but at least it keeps my hard drive from filling up...

It also depends a lot on how the photos are going to be used, some subjects, the only image I'd ever use is the one I'll post in a gallery, and have printed, which leaves the vast majority in the recycle bin. I used to look at my pictures trying to find a good reason to delete it, and if not, it stayed. Now I have to look for a reason to keep them. Each one that stays in storage needs a nicely redeeming feature, if it's not documenting something, or I don't love it, bye bye!

As SYR has said, as I've learned more, I've learnt more critical understanding of an image, I find I fire off less shots, and am more critical of the ones I do take. However, if I hadn't started off using my camera like a machine gun, I would not have learnt as quickly what I now know.

tjstrider

When I go to athletic games there is about 20% that I flat out delete forever.

As far as "keepers" I end up keeping about 5 - 10 in 100 for actually "good" shots.

Good times

That is just because I don't like cluttering my harddrive with photos that I won't end up using.

draggin wrote:

It depends on what one decide is a keeper or not, I should imagine that it varys between every photographer based upon there ability................

Tim

KMCC

In general, the only ones that I keep are the ones that will eventually make it into a gallery.

In terms of my sports shots, my first step is to delete any that are out of focus, poorly composed, or just don't capture any action worth remembering.

I haven't kept any statistics, but I'd suppose that I'm keeping 50-60% lately. As has been mentioned earlier, practice improves the percentage of keepers.

vt1122

Thanks for all the great replies. I agree shooting other subjects the keeper rate would be much lower. I should have been more precise.
Looking for an average for sports/event type photography. By keepers I mean after culling out the out of focus and miss timed shots, keepers being in focus, faces and ball in shot, showing some type of action. Something a parent would want.

Many of the shots I keep for parents to go thru I wouldn't keep for myself.
Of the 3 to 4 thousand shots from the last couple of years I have about 100 that I keep in my sports portfolio. And a few of these are only there because they are of my daughters.

vt1122

SloYerRoll wrote:

About 20-25%.

I'm brutal when it comes to keepers though.

One time, my wife was in the room when I was culling shots and she get pretty upset about the ones I trashed. She said they were great, I thought they were mediocre at best (she's a professional photographer. I'm just an enthusiast).

Ironically, my keeper rate has actually decreased dramatically since I've learned to shoot better and gained more experience. There are allot of shots in my archives that I look at and have no idea why I didn't trash them as soon as I saw them.

To put it into more perspective:
David, this next statement says NOTHING about your photography, it only speaks of my retentive nature. Out of those shots you posted, I'd only keep one. But I also very rarely shoot sports and know very specifically what I want when looking at whether to keep or trash a picture.

Which one? Just curious, I have a couple that I would consider keepers.

SloYerRoll

vt1122 wrote:

Which one? Just curious, I have a couple that I would consider keepers.

#4.
There's motion blur, but I like how I can see all the faces, how it was composed and catching the action in the right moment.

vt1122

SloYerRoll wrote:

#4.
There's motion blur, but I like how I can see all the faces, how it was composed and catching the action in the right moment.

My picks were 1 and 7.

To me 4 has a little to much blur and the portolets in the backgroung kill it for me. But I think it is a good enough shot for parents to consider. By the way my daughter is the red head #22 in shot #6

SloYerRoll

vt1122 wrote:

My picks were 1 and 7.

To me 4 has a little to much blur and the portolets in the backgroung kill it for me. But I think it is a good enough shot for parents to consider. By the way my daughter is the red head #22 in shot #6

I agree about the blur, but out of those, that's definitely the best to me. That goes to show I'm a parent and not a sports shooter.

Being a parent of a future all star I'd rather see my child in shot where she looks good even in the midst of the game. Contorted faces just don't do it for me. Maybe that should be considered though since many ppl shooting ports are selling to parents and not to SI. Just a thought

KED

vt1122 wrote:

Curious what others find they keep compared to shots taken.

I've shot about 30 lacrosse games this spring from girls' 8th grade to mens' college D-I. I trash ~20% right out of the camera for either OOF, main player blocked, or just boring. Out of what's left I am finding a statistical migration toward about 50% "keepers", defined as worthy of being posted on my website, which is NOT the same as qualifying for my "best of" gallery (if one were to exist). So mathematically that makes me 40% "keepers" overall. And for purposes of calibrating yourself, I think I stink at this!

vt1122

KED wrote:

I've shot about 30 lacrosse games this spring from girls' 8th grade to mens' college D-I. I trash ~20% right out of the camera for either OOF, main player blocked, or just boring. Out of what's left I am finding a statistical migration toward about 50% "keepers", defined as worthy of being posted on my website, which is NOT the same as qualifying for my "best of" gallery (if one were to exist). So mathematically that makes me 40% "keepers" overall. And for purposes of calibrating yourself, I think I stink at this!

I have checked out your site a couple of times and you have some great shots. I probably keep more than I should and still have a lot to learn. Thats why I started this thread to see how I compared to others but the term keeper has to many different meanings for different people. It seems that a lot of the pics I think are border line the parents think are great.

KED

vt1122 wrote:

I have checked out your site a couple of times and you have some great shots. I probably keep more than I should and still have a lot to learn. Thats why I started this thread to see how I compared to others but the term keeper has to many different meanings for different people. It seems that a lot of the pics I think are border line the parents think are great.

Well first of all, I am flattered that you have checked out my site, so thank you for that. My own analytic vector on this is to let the marginal shot "go" because the player or his or her parent might appreciate it, and meanwhile, I've posted what I thought were 100% 5-star keepers up here for different reasons only to have well-qualified people point out to me how very much is wrong with them -- and they were right!

IMO there is nothing wrong with "keeping more than you should" (excepting, of course, flat-out bad shots) unless you are auditioning to be a contract shooter for SI; otherwse, you never know what will resonate with someone.

kwcrow

vt1122 wrote:

My picks were 1 and 7.

To me 4 has a little to much blur and the portolets in the backgroung kill it for me. But I think it is a good enough shot for parents to consider. By the way my daughter is the red head #22 in shot #6

I also thought that 1 and 7 were the best and thought 4 was blurred and not as interesting. With harddrive space so cheap, I only delete ones that I would not feel right selling to a parent because of blur or focus. I think it depends on your reason for shooting. I shoot high school sports, and sometimes I only get 2 or 3 shots of a certain kid and their parents order one of each no matter how bad they are.

Digital Illusions

Keepers
I really like #7, I think you not only captured the moment but you captured the emotion too.

As for the keeper rate, I would say that about 10-15% of the images I shoot are worthy of adding to my SmugMug site. However closer to 50% are worthy of keeping for later use, wallpapers, small web art; basically anything to good to toss but not worth selling.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>

beetle8

OK I'll chime in...
This is a highly dependent question.
I'll agree that as I have progressed, my per click ratio has increased.
Also keeping for a protfolio or keeping for a possible parent purchase is way different.
I don't do the culling anymore before posting to my smugmug account for parent purchase because quite litterally I was throwing away money. For gymnastics photography when I was culling I was at @ 40% I'd say now with more experience and someone else culling I'm closer to 60 to 70% getting posted.
When I do BMX racing my ratio is lower because now it's back to me culling and I'm doing alot of playing with panning and extreme composition (wide angle under jumps or bottom of the berm type of stuff) so the "experimentation" factor inevitably lowers my ration down to @ 30%
There is no telling what will sell to a parent that is going to buy. A lot of material on how to shoot sports mention the face and ball for it to be a "money shot". this is not the case when you are marketing to a parent. I used to delete all of my pictures of backs then someone else started culling, those shots got posted and subsequently quite a few get purchased.
For some commical contrast... I just returned from Bonaire on a scuba diving vacation. I had 22 dives @ 600 clicks and maybe ten worth not deleting.


Regarding the ones you posted I would keep more than one of them. All of them but #3 are worth showing to the parents.

vt1122

Thanks for all the replies. Keep um coming.