Do you ever feel like giving up ?

Sorry to whine but I am getting so frustrated and discouraged lately...
I got my first SLR about two years ago, I took a photography class early last
year, & I take quite a few pics but still I dont see much improvement( I have been taking pictures since I was a kid, the last 2 years I have gotten serious.)
.Out of a roll of 24 exposure , less than half look OK........ I get confused alot
and I forget what I am doing .I think some of it
is due to stress from my health (I had major back surgery about 2 months after I
got my camera,it took me over 3 months to recover and now my pain is worse,
now I have a ruptured disc in the back of my neck & I have constant head aches,
so I'm imagine that is what is causing a lot of my confusion) Like I said I am
very sorry to whine, I just wonder if anyone else ever felt like giving up because
you saw no progress in your work or is it just me ?

What type of photography are you doing?

Here is a suggestion. Make a list of "rules" which you are familiar with in regards to a good photograph.

Shoot a whole roll with an intended subject but before hitting the shutter look at your list of to make sure you have addressed each "rule." You'll have to use the entire roll for this PROJECT. When you are done, I'm sure at least one of the shots you will take pride in. If they don't come out right evaluate the common problem among them and identify the weakness. What ever will fix that problem, you should add it to your list. Oh yeah, don't forget to do exposure bracketing!!

Film photography can be costly but you have to work with what you got.

Making the list will help with the issue of "I get confused alot
and I forget what I am doing "

Focusing on one subject and taking your time will hopefully ease your physical issues.

Give yourself photography homework. Some of your ideas should come from the pictures that you appreciate seeing here on PR. Try to replicate the results. Or start with the basics if you must. Buy a single flower and put it in a vase next to window light.

Don't give up. I think your frustration might be coming from a disorganized approach to photography. I love photography homework, I wish I were in school again for photography.

I hope you are posting shots here to get other people's opinion.

Hope this helps. I'm no teacher or pro. These are just my thoughts.

I don't think you should give photography just yet. It takes time, and the most important thing is not to take it too seriously. Have fun...try baby steps like shooting with shutter speed or aperature priority. Don't use full manual.

When you have constant pain from your back, you are probably not in the frame of mind to to really enjoy the outing so take it easy. Take one photo slowly and keeping in mind the steps rather than taking 24 exposures quickly.

Remember to have fun...
Loren

SH, health issues aside (and I agree with you, they may very well have a big influence on your state of mind), photography can be extremely frustrating to learn. As Loren points out, progress often comes at an excruciatingly slow pace.

One thing that might help would be for you to lower your expectations. Not of your image quality, of course, but rather your productivity.

Sure, noticing more and more good shots on a film roll or memory card is almost always an indication that your are indeed improving, but IMO the basic idea of "keeping score" and attaching a lot of meaning to the percentage of successful pics can be very counterproductive and even disheartening...

For example, I do this for a living, and in the days when I shot film, if a roll of 36 had a single really good shot, I judged it a sucess. Two or three good shots and I'd be VERY happy.

Now, with digital, on a 1G card (maybe 100 or so image files, depending on my DSLR), I'm satisfied with about a half dozen keepers. To have HALF of them look good, to me would be an astronomical success.

So, it's all relative. I think you need to learn to be satisfied with just a few good shots from each of your shoots, and don't think of yourself as a failure simply because you discard the rest. That's simply editing...

Most importantly, you need to take a critical look at why the rejects are bad. That is how you improve. If you find yourself making the same mistakes over and over, that should be what you focus on the most.

Perhaps you're trying to do too much. For any given roll of film or memory card, you should have a large group of similar images. IOW, don't try to shoot 24 seperate subjects with a roll of 24 exposures. Go for slight variations of a single subject.

With each frame, change the exposure slightly, or change the comosition slightly, or change your shooting angle or your lighting. Slightly. That's the key. You want to fine tune your shots so you can identify things that are working and things that aren't...

Hope that helps...

To second what Steve said... I still shoot film and from any trip I will have 10-30 exposed rolls. There are many times that I will have nothing on a roll to mention about. I often shoot to take notes, to keep tabs of what I was doing.

If I have one good shot per roll I am very happy.... on my Tango shot that I love it took two rolls of film to produce one shot. I was lucky to get it because it was exposure number 37 on a 36 exposure roll. whewww

In photography the strike out ratio can be discouraging, but live for the home runs. Not as many, but a ton of fun when you get that "shot".


Loren

Dude,

The first thing you've gotta do is change your name - "subhuman" and with it the attitude that comes with it. I've never met you and I can safely say you're no where near sub-human. You are just frustrated because you're in pain but... the GOOD thing is, you're attracted to and attached to something that's very good to get lost in - photography.

I get migraine headaches once a week - bad enough to where I'd pay somebody to clobber my head with a bat - that'd surely feel better - so i know pain. I tell you what though...when I grab my camera and retreat into my photo world, nothing, not even my banging head can take away the realization of how truly beautiful the World is around us. You've gotta do the same....

Okay - so this has nothing to do with photography, right? Actually it does. My desire to take pictures takes me beyond my headaches and gets me to look at things in ways no one normally "sees." As you've read from the other posts, photography isn't an instantaneous thing, often it takes time (and I mean hours sometimes) to get the ONE shot that you're looking for. But that's where the beauty is. In those hours of waiting you have time to sit and slow the world down. You have time to really look and breathe and "see."

Did you see the first "Austin Powers" movie? In it, Austin Powers mimicks fashion photogs by snapping pix of Vanessa this way and that, and at high speed. It's like that in the real world only, ONE of those shots (out of countless rolls) MIGHT be considered good enough for consideration in a pictorial spread. The key is to keep shooting!

Here's my recommendation to you....(I know, you've received a bunch so take this as you will.) FIRST - have FUN and don't put so much emphasis on whether any of your shots come out. I used to keep a log of how I shot each picture in a little note book. If I were trying a night-time time lapse I'd write down, "F-8 for 10 minutes with a 28mm lens." If the resulting picture came out I'd know how to do it again. If It didn't i'd know how to modify the f-stop or exposure time to get better results. You can see, photography is often a trial-and-error practice...until you get enough experience to "see."

Finally, here's a story that taught me a lot. I once took a motion picture photography (that's what I do for a living) class from the DP who shot "Young Frankenstein." He kept a three-ring binder of 35mm slides that he shot as film tests for all his films. Under each slide he wrote the F-number, the lens setting, shutter speed, etc that he used to get the particular exposure. Over the years all he had to do when he wanted to find out how to create a film "look" was consult his slide binders to find the settings needed. He told me that often, the slides he shot for test came back with unexpected results - results that'd be "perfect for some other film." Instead of losing the info, he recorded it and stored it away for future use. That's photography. The more you shoot the better you get and the easier it becomes.

Sorry to have written a book here - I hope this helps....

R. Case

Check this out and tell me what you think - good and bad.
www.digitalrailroad.net/deCasa

There's a lot of great advice here. Remember that progress isn't linear - you may go for a long time before you notice an improvement but go back and look at what you shot most recently versus six months ago versus when you first picked up the camera. I've never heard of anyone seeing an improvement with every roll of film. Chances are, you will see improvement. It's just that those "ahh ha!" moments don't happen very often.

At first I was going to recommend against exposure bracketing because it doesn't teach you exposure, just bracketing - but as long as you examine your work it could be a help. Shoot (for example) the setting you think is correct, then maybe 1/2 stop above and below and one stop above and below. Pick which one is best and figure out why, if it's not the one in the middle which is what you thought was correct. There isn't necessarily a right or wrong here, it's your preference that counts.

John Shaw has some great books that deal with the technical aspects of photography. The Nature Photographer's Workbook is a very good one whether or not that's what you shoot.

Yeah,,I feel like giving up at times too but photography is my bread and butter having a camera in my hands nearly everyday for 27 years...I don't have any problems shooting images for work but do have trouble just going out and shooting for myself....Don't get me wrong,,I love photography but having difficulty finding or seeing "that shot"..

Am I making sense??

Jurgen
Australia

I just do what I feel like doing. I don't take photography seriously at all, except when I'm doing photos for someone else.

- I always pay attention to the technical side so my pictures are rarely unsharp, incorrectly exposed, etc.
- Content - I just try to follow my eye. What am I looking at that interests me? Then I try to ensure that I get an image which is right. Often it's a question of waiting till something happens that gives a keynote to the whole thing.
- Aesthetics - I just try to make it look right. Usually afterwards I can theorise on why the composition was right, but at the time of shooting it just gooked good.

Despite all that - the majority of photos that I take don't satisfy me and there's only a tiny minority that I'm actually pleased with. But who cares? I go out and shoot 100 photos and discover that I have just one that I'm really pleased with but the day has been a success - I have added one extra image to my treasures and that's what counts.

Charles

"Twelve significant images in any one year is a good crop." Ansel Adams

I'll let you do the math...

Please don't give up. I read a post from one of my favorite photographers on this site that he had been taking pictures about four years. I wouldn't put a time frame on anything but, Tiger Woods didn't get to be Tiger Woods in two years. Give it more time. Maybe a slower pace would help.

[QUOTE=subhuman]Sorry to whine but I am getting so frustrated and discouraged lately...
I got my first SLR about two years ago, I took a photography class early last
year, & I take quite a few pics but still I dont see much improvement.[QUOTE]

When I first started taking pictures as a kid and could not afford much film out of my allowance, I was also often discouraged by my goofs. Then I read a profile of a photographer and an assignment in Popular Photography.

He was to shoot 8 photos of flowers for a magazine. At the time, I would have probably considered that if I were in the same position, I would have gone out with a couple of rolls of film, a macro and a regular lens and shot away.

He went out with 3 camera bodies, a considerable number of lenses from fish eye to 1000 mm., tripods, reflectors, auxiliary lighting with barn doors and gels, light boxes, as well as flashes, and in a flower nursery took over 1,000 photos from sun up to sun down.

I soon came to realize that my discouragement was due to a very limited perspective, and that time, equipment and experience play an extremely important part in creating an effective photo. Talent and creativity, whether real or not, are only part of the mix.

Ronnoco

While I never feel like giving up, I have felt some of the frustration you are talking about. Mostly due to making the same mistakes over and over. Not holding the camera properly to get the sharpest shot possible, :mad2: forgetting to change settings such as ISO or white balance when conditions change, :mad2: :mad2: concentrating too much on the subject and not paying enough attention to other things in the frame that may distract from the subject. :mad2: :mad2: :mad2: That's just a few of a very long list of basics that I repeatedly screw up. HOWEVER, sloooooowly but surely it is getting better.

What I do from time to time is go out and just work on basic stuff for the day. I will go somewhere that I need to change wb or iso frequently and worry about nothing else but getting that right for that day. I just pick something that needs work and do that for the day and nothing else and eventually it becomes second nature and I learn to do it without thinking about it.

I don't feel like giving up, though I do get fustrated at times, so I understand where you are coming from subhuman. Hang in there! there has been a lot of great advice in all the replies given in this thread.:)

:thumbsup: I'll have to agree with Max P D on that one... as well as the others....i mean this really is some good stuff...even for those of us who have not reached the point of wanting to give up!

And I will also add one thing! Whenever you feel like giving up....when you are sulking in frustration...take a good look at your life...something needs to be changed...if you can't see it, then look into yourself and you will find it....when your mind needs change you start getting easily irritated....Trust me I know...I flip flopped so many times in my life....hit many brick walls until I finally figured it out!

Don't give up.
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Quote:

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Originally Posted by subhuman

I just wonder if anyone else ever felt like giving up?

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All the time! Even though I do see progress in my work.

I've been flip flopping on the idea of giving up lately. I love landscape/nature photography but I have the hardest time getting it right. I just can't get the composition right, and if I do manage to get a decent composition I end up screwing something else up to ruin the shot.

In the end it's all about doing what I enjoy, and I just happen to enjoy going out and taking pictures. Yes, even if I know I will look at them when I get home and think they're all crap.