Tibetan Monk meditating

How High is your bar?

Last summer I had the good fortune to travel to Lhasa, Tibet and made it a point to stop by the Dunya Restaurant which is a popular spot for trekkers in the region. I struck up a conversation with one of the owners who couldn?t help noticing all the camera equipment I was carrying and mentioned that a few days before Steve McCord, the well known National Geographic photographer (Afghan girl cover) had stopped in to eat. She had a nice conversation with him and during their conversation he mentioned to her that he was only happy with one of out 3500 images that he shot.

Wow! One out of thirty five hundred! I find that I am generally happy with 1 out of 100 which got me to thinking maybe my standards are too low and perhaps it is time to raise the bar. In the meantime, had I been fortunate enough to run into Mr. McCord I would probably have prostrated myself and declared, '"I'm not worthy"!

Too often I think I tend to concentrate on hardware and the mechanics of making a picture rather than actually looking at the subject that is framed in my viewfinder. I need to become more judgmental and critical of myself. I'm going to start by going back over my images that I have been generally happy with and look at them with a more critical eye. Could I have framed this better, or perhaps shot it from a better angle? Would the picture be better if I moved slightly higher; or lower, or more to the left or right? What about the background? Does it compliment or distract from the subject? Is there a foreground element that adds or detracts from the image? How about the exposure, the focus, angle of the light??!! I'm giving myself a headache!

Ok, I'm not unrealistic enough to believe that I'm going to actually have the time to evaluate every nuance of my subject every time I push the shutter. However, I do believe that by studying not only my images but the images of my mentors and even my friends, that perhaps subconsciously I will begin to begin to improve. I'm also sure that now my ratio of good images versus images shot is going to decline. After all, I'm raising the bar!