Too many pictures?

Interesting article. Well worth reading. I tend to subscribe to the view expressed in a comment by Anthony Shaughnessy:

I’ve got 104 pictures in the galleries of my main site. That’s about 7.4 pictures per year I’ve been active.On the other hand, blogs are a great way to do something with the large numbers of pictures one takes. You can tell the story of the day’s shoot with a selection of a dozen-ish pictures from that day, even if they don’t all make the cut into your main portfolio. Reading down the months and years of your blog is then a story in itself with the photos making the story.

Source: The Online Photographer: What’s the Purpose of Taking More Photographs?

I tend to take as many pictures as I can, delete a lot of them and then spend time processing those that remain. I post some (few) to Facebook; some to Flickr; and most to this blog. The blog helps me keep a sort of illustrated diary of what I’m doing and helps me to keep up the discipline of taking pictures. Recently I’ve been feeling that I take too many pictures – but I don’t think that’s the problem. The problem is that I show them all on the blog. I think that what I need to do is to revise the blog so the diary aspect is downplayed and a set of portfolios (of pictures I really like) is more prominent.

I also liked this from Petapixel:

In closing, I want to take you to Switzerland where I also teach. Imagine a mountain before you. You see its peak and want to climb up to the top. It is your life’s goal. Start by standing back far enough to confirm it is really there, then head straight for it knowing it will disappear from sight for most of your life as you climb and meander the hidden forest trails that lift you ever higher even as many sections force you to drop down into the mountainside pockets of disappointment or even despair, but you will be climbing soon enough and always headed toward your goal.

There will be those special occasions — and may there be many of them — when the fruits of your labors are suddenly made visible, to be celebrated, when you will again see the peak, only closer now, giving you confidence to step forward ever more briskly and bravely.

At one point the tree line will thin out the way hair on the top of an old man begins to bald away, but the air will be clear and the path sure.

At the top you will delight in what you have accomplished. You look around you and see just how far you have come. But then your turn around and as you do you become aware of mountain peaks far higher than what you had ever dreamed of, peaks that from the distance when you first looked up were not even there, completely hidden from your view.

And now, there they are, huge peaks but your climbing days are done.

You have three choices: You can look up with raging jealousy and end your days in sadness and regret. Or you can look down at all the distance you climbed, become arrogant about every step you took and not have many friends with whom to share your closing days.

Or you can skim the horizon and take in the gorgeous sweep of the panorama before you. If you can do that you will know peace and rare humility.

We do not have to be number one in this world. We only have to be number one to ourselves. There is a special peace that comes with such humility. When you reach this peak in life, you’ve reached the highest mountain peak of them all.

The Helsinki Bus Station by Arno Rafael Minkkinen on Petapixel.