Several reasons. One is that for a lot of my subjects I have very high failure rates. A lot of the shots are unusable, most often because the centre of focus is not in exactly the right place and so the wrong bits of the subject are in focus (wrong compared to how I want the image to look). The smaller the subject is the more difficult it is to get the focus placement right. Also, it is often breezy around here and plants move around in the breeze, the longer and thinner their stems the more they move. Most of the invertebrates I photograph are on plants, so even if they are standing still they move as the plants they are on move in the breeze. Also, whether or not it is breezy, invertebrate subjects may also wander around. Or even if they are standing still and there is no breeze bits of them may wave around, antennae especially, and legs when they are grooming. And I work hand-held a lot of the time, which adds to the variability of where the focus is centred. So I often take multiple shots to increase the chances of getting at least one that is appropriately focused.
I always take a few shots if I get a chance (not just with invertebrates, but with plants too). Of course with invertebrates they may not give me that chance. The breezier the conditions, the more shots I take. I hardly ever stop to review shots to see if they have worked; I don't find that a practical proposition out in the field, looking at the tiny camera screen, and with invertebrates it is easy to miss good shots if you get sidetracked into examining shots you have already taken rather than paying attention to the subject.
Sometimes an animal may be doing something interesting - building a web, wrapping prey, feeding, grooming, mating, shedding its skin, inflating its wings, blowing bubbles, interacting in some way with another animal of its own kind or a different kind, or just wandering around. When I find something like that going on I keep taking photos for as long as it goes on, or until it becomes too repetitive for me to want to continue. This might involve hundreds of captures for a single subject.
Click on an image to see a larger version
One subject, wasps flying in an out of their nest, involved several thousand captures (twice over, for different nests in different years). Wasps are very, very difficult to capture in flight even when they are flying in and out of the same small hole, and the failure rate for this was very high indeed. It wasn't simply that the focus was a bit misplaced. The wasps movee so fast that very often the wasp would have left the frame by the time the image was captured.
For botanical shots I am interested in the way the look of a subject changes as the light changes and I often photograph the same subject in different conditions on different days, sometimes on the same day. And sometimes a plant is sitting in pooled light coming through foliage above it which is moving in the breeze, creating continually changing patterns of light and shade. When I come across this I may take lots of shots in the hope that one or more looks good. The patterns change too fast to wait for a good pattern and then photograph it. Like with wasps in flight, by the time you and the camera have reacted the moment has passed, so you end up capturing lots of images in the hope of getting some that work. I also explore different angles on the subject as this can radically affect the look of backgrounds and how well they fit with the subject.
With aperture bracketing I take seven shots for each press of the shutter button, from f/2.8 to f/22. This lets me choose the balance I like for a particular scene between the amount of the subject that is in focus and the way that the background looks, both of which change as the aperture changes. This often involves slow shutter speeds for the smaller apertures and I usually capture several bracket sets of a subject, here too hoping that each aperture will have worked in at least one of the bracket sets.
Here are some examples where I kept several of the images from a seven image aperture bracket set. I do like having a bit going on, or at least hinted at, in my backgrounds if it seems to be harmonious with the subject, to add some context and/or add some visual variety and complexity. Many people of course prefer simpler, plainer backgrounds.
Another cause of larger numbers of captures is that for invertebrates I like to have series of images of a subject varying from close in on the subject out to seeing the subject quite small in its wider environment.
In such cases I will be doing multiple captures for each framing, trying to get a good result for that framing. The variation in framing can go on for some time if the subject is doing something interesting or moving around.
So I capture lots of shots to try and get some that I like.
But why do I keep so many similar shots? Wouldn't it be better just to select the best ones and throw the rest away? To some extent that is what I am aiming for with my portfolio, and with this blog too for that matter, picking the ones I like best.
As mentioned in the first post in this blog, Flickr is something of a dumping ground for my photos, and a few of other people's photos that I have worked on, with their permission, to discuss on line. However, I do cull quite heavily as I go through a set of images. With invertebrates, where the number of captures is typically much higher than with botanical subjects, I often get rid of 80 to 95% or so of the captured images, either because they didn't work, or when they did work because I only want to keep one of a set of very similar images. It is similar with common birds in flight, where I keep relatively few of the captures. With botanical subjects and my infrequent other subjects I tend to capture smaller numbers of images and keep a greater proportion of them.
When I'm getting ready to finalise a set of images to put up at Flickr I look through it as a slideshow and where there are images that are too similar to retain (my) interest I remove some, and I keep doing that until I'm content to sit through the whole lot without getting bored by repitition of too similar scenes and subjects. I'm sure there are still more than many people would want to see, but that is where the portfolio will hopefully be of some benefit, and perhaps this blog too.
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