Photography is not a game!

A macro shot from my art collection taken during late March 2012

The last month has been a little crazy. Though I never tire of taking photos it is tiring editing all the photos after the shoot. I use Lightroom 3 to speed up my workflow and catalogue my work, but it also has the added function of tracking my work and number of edits. For the last 30 days I have worked on 11509 images! Amongst these were 2 big weddings, 2 large stage events, a school sport day and a host of studio and location shoots and a couple of art snaps (just to relax!).

When you consider that you spend a minimum of 1 minute per photo doing adjustments and small fixes then 11000 photos becomes 183 hours of work. The average working individual works 40hours a week (5 days & 8 hours a day), or 160 hours a month, so editing 11000 takes up a whole month to edit with an additional 20+ hours! And this does not even include the time spent doing the photography.

Wedding Photo taken during March 2012

Wedding photography is always fun to do, but they are also the most work. I more often than not find myself happily clicking away during a wedding filling up my various memory cards without concern for the number of shots I take. After much practice it has become a simple process of checking the source light and background to compose the next great shot and I easily achieve a shot rate of 2000 or more photos in a 6-8 hour wedding. But once I get home and download all these photos I again realise, much as the person who wakes up with a hangover and swears never to drink again, that I take too many “keepers” (photos which will make it to the wedding album) and load myself with too much editing work. But, for me, it is an addiction. Even when I know I have more than enough photos to make the bridal couple happy I simply continue taking photos because I see the next great scene unfolding before me.

I spent half my day today just updating my galleries on my website, so take a look around.