Most of the Photographs I take are Crap, and I am okay with that

At times it has bothered me, that most of the photographs I take are really crap. They are nothing special. The composition is off, they lack a focal point, the lighting is flat, they have little reason to exist. Most are snapshots, made with expensive cameras and lenses. Most, but not all, are crap. And I am okay with that, as long as there are a few bangers in the bunch. 

I watch Thomas Heaton on YouTube struggle to find the perfect shot. He will spend hours climbing a mountain, then another hour searching for the composition. He consults the weather radar, trying to time the perfect lighting. He will sigh that there is nothing worth shooting. Then he will set up exposure, using a ten-stop filter and a two minute exposure. If the light holds, he might get three or four exposures, then it is gone. All the while I am all but shouting at the screen, there is a perfect shot over your shoulder, take the quick shot, turn up the ISO, shoot faster and shoot more. But that is not his style.  His success rate is much-much higher than mine, but he shoots far-far fewer images than I do. 

What is my success rate? We did a major trip in April and May of this year, a little over a month, when I downloaded images onto my desktop, 4,257 images. That is undoubtedly a record number of images in a month for me. Out of those I have printed five. There are probably 45 that are good, being conservative, one keeper for every 50 shots. 

Calib at Bad Flashes on YouTube will get probably 1 in 10, when he is shooting film. Jason at Grainy Days, gets probably about the same that he is proud of - again they shoot mostly film, so they have a much higher marginal cost than I do with digital.

For me one of the huge advantages of digital, is the almost negligible marginal cost.  Charging batteries and wear and tear on the cameras and lenses is the only cost of taking one more expose, unlike film where there is the cost of film and processing in addition to batteries and camera repair or replacement.  

And my shooting style has developed into taking lots of shots, and taking them quickly. A few years ago I was out at Mt. Vernon for a Revolutionary War Weekend, and shot 300 exposures in probably 20 minutes.  There were probably 20 great shots in that. 

I carry my camera on my wrist, ready to go at a moments notice. (And I have lost another lens cap.) I snap and go.  I can shoot faster with my DLSR than I can with my phone, because it takes longer to enter the passcode and click on the camera on my phone, than it does to raise, frame, and shoot on my real camera (not that I have not taken some amazing photos on my phone.