Strike rate
Sometimes when you hit the shutter release you are pretty certain that you’ve got something good. Other times it’s not until you get home that the full picture emerges (the LCD screen on the back of the camera doesn’t let you see anywhere near enough to be certain). Southend Shakedown definitely falls into the latter category.
I very rarely go out with any pre-set ideas about what type of photos I am going to take. That’s why I’d probably struggle as a professional because I don’t like working to a brief. For me, it’s a much more intuitive reactive process; something catches my eye, often for reasons that I can’t put my finger on, either at the time or later.
Some days, the pictures just seem to flow, one after the other. It’s akin to the way some sportsmen will talk about “being in the groove” or “the zone” when they are performing well. On other occasions it seems to be more of a struggle; for whatever reason nothing really catches my eye. So I’m always interested in what I’d describe as my “strike rate”, the number of pictures I think are worth putting on display expressed as a percentage of the number I took. What was intended to be a fun day having a few drinks with friends yielded 35 from 93 for 35%. By my self-critical standards, I think this is on the high side so it’s probably a measure of a good (in the productive sense) day. And yes, we enjoyed ourselves too, but that’s another story.
