Taking photos but not showing them

[CliveC]

Do your friends and family get annoyed when you take photos often, yet show very few, or even none? I've gotten more picky at what photos I post and that seems to irk people for some reason.

Yes I have a camera to my face a lot and I may fire off dozens of shots and only post a handful (if I'm lucky). I can sort of understand the curiosity, but they seem think it doesn't matter if I post bad or boring photos: Quantity over quality.

Thoughts?

 

[ChrisLivsey]

Editing, which I think in essence is what you are describing, is a seperate art, almost, than the making.
Some can some can't, see Flickr for examples where I note a wedding is posted with the full card contents just apparently dumped, it could of course be cheap back up 😉

As always we defer to HCB, a consummate editor of his own work, try to find a contact sheet of his 😀 Some sequences have been reconstructed because there is much to learn from how a subject is explored and it is fascinating to see the alternatives a "master" work was chosen from.

The French TV shorts series "Contacts" and some recent books have explored this and I love them but they are I think only of real interest to photographers and historians.

The quick availability of high quality reproductions be they on screen or paper compared with traditional printing or projection has perhaps changed the audience perception of what should be shown but I think you should be flattered that an interest is shown at all 😀

 

[George Bonanno]

This is not a thought but my reality.

I take from 12 to 120 plus pictures per day and night... family, friends, girlfriends, events, street, strangers, etc... film, digital, electronic flash, flashbulbs... whatever, and in many different formats may I add.

Never ever did anyone demand an image from me out of the many tens of thousands of pictures I've taken. For the most part they are clueless and it's none of their business what pictures I take anyway.

The only one that gets over on me is my number one girlfriend... and I comply totally.

BTW: HCB... screw him ! He's old hat and an overrated dead self propelled egomaniac. His best stuff was posed... prefabricated.

Now I need to edit all the crappy pictures I've taken this evening.

 

[amateriat]

IMO, someone who takes their time showing what they've shot is preferable to someone indiscriminately spewing forth the day's "take" simply because they can, technically speaking. (I can think of only one person who can sometimes get away with something like that, but I was the one to show her how to use her camera a bit more effectively, for what that's worth.) ;-)


- Barrett

 

[ricnak]

I take many photos. I show very few. Sometimes I walk into the computer room and find a family member going through a slideshow of my daily photos - it makes me feel strangely violated. What I choose to take photos of in the day is a private thing.

In the past, I have volunteered to photograph significant family events. I have diligently photographed them, some great shots, but no one else has ever seen them. It is a bit sad. An inferiority complex maybe?

 

[slidesandthecity]

I shoot (and also print) exclusively for my own amusement and therefore hardly ever show my photos.

 

[Spanik]

Like slidesandthecity I only take photo's for my own amusement. More to play with my camera(s) than for the resulting images. Which are crap anyway. I have no problem anyone seeing the photo's but they do not have any pretention to be taken to be viewed. If someone asks me to see them, they can look at them. But it isn't more than an uncut band of slides. If they ask (and pay) for a print no problem.