The problem with digital photography
What makes digital photography so great also is the source of a problem. When the barriers to taking pictures are so low you can create a difficult situation sorting through them to find the ones to keep. Keeping them all is no answer either it just delays the selection to some later time. With film there are fixed limits to how many frames of film you might have and how much you might want for later, digital blows through that barrier allowing thousands of pictures on a memory card. There is an easily determined cost to film that goes something like (Film $6 + Developing $3.00 = $9.00 /36) = about 25 cents per shot. Once you have a digital camera the per shot cost is virtually nil.
So it becomes very tempting to just keep shooting and taking a multitude of pictures with digital but it’s when you have to pick out the worthy ones while being careful to not delete something that might have a distinct value later that you might wish you had used more restraint. The upside of course is that you increase your chances of capturing an interesting moment but that can be done with film too it just requires more active participation on the part of the photographer. Instead of snapping you should be looking and thinking.
Of course I am guilty of this myself this digital “contact sheet” may illustrate my point. I spent nearly as much time going through these images as I did taking them and that is not the way I want to spend my time.
Post Script: Between the time I wrote this post and am posting it online I’ve done this again, ending up deleting more than half the pictures I took from a single day.