GEAR TALK - A Peek Behind the Curtain

A TIME AND MOTION STUDY

As the author of PebblePlace.com, I am guilty of some showmanship. I show and write what I want you to see and read. The magic being - you just see the result and the (often boring) details behind the pictures are glossed over. So today we will peek behind the veil just a tiny bit.

North Texas is not a particularly scenic locale - no mountains, no rolling hills, no oceans... It is mostly urban areas with neighboring bedtime communities (ie - where people sleep when they are not working). If taking pictures in my immediate 10 mile radius, you would see houses, schools, shopping centers, restaurants, traffic lights, highways... all very flat, all very commercial, and all very generic.

In search of more photographic locales of my liking, I often drive to the north, northeast or northwest. Thus, my local landscape pictures can be grouped into two buckets - 'downtown' and 'not downtown'. The pictures shown here today were taken over the past two months and represent a good cross section of those efforts.

While having a conversation about someone else's portfolio, it prompted to wonder how much time do I invest into a 'best of' shot? What is a 'best of' shot? If somebody said, "show me your 10 best pictures of North Texas" - those would be the 'best of' shots. And the peek behind the curtains today is how much time I spent getting each picture.

WINDSHIELD TIME

If talking about my 10 'Best of North Texas' pictures, the first question in my mind is how many tries (trips) did it take to get that picture? The numbers in the table below may look utterly ridiculous, but they are no joke, I have been to many of these spots 20+ times over the past 15 years -

Sums to 18, assuming 10 trips on average.

That sums to 18 trips, but let's be conservative and say the average is 10 trips. Drive time is easily 1.5 hours on average in each direction, but let's assume 2.5 hours roundtrip. That comes to 10 trips x 2.5 hours, or 25 hours of windshield time to a given spot.

CAPTURE AND EDIT TIME

For the sake of brevity, I am going to gloss over this topic a little bit because the times can vary so much depending on the type of shot, weather conditions, etc.

Likely many more hours spent editing, especially if printing involved.

Best case there is one keeper per trip for that unique spot, so the effective hours invested is (2 hrs + 8 hrs) x the 10 trip assumption = 100 hours. So it is likely each of the '10 Best Of' pictures has 25 hours of windshield time + 100 hours of capture and edit time, thus 125 hours per image. Knowing first hand how much time I sink into this stuff, 125 hours is underestimating the true time.

THE WRAP UP

To sum this all up, over the years I have found a number of spots. Each of those spots has been photographed multiple times. The working assumption is 10 times and each visit results in one keeper. So there are 10 candidates spanning 15 years, and one of those candidates is crowned the 'best of'. It may have been the picture from the first trip, sixth trip, 18nth trip...

The last trip is not always the best shot. I am taking pictures of the same stuff over and over, so ultimately it is the light that makes one picture the 'best of' versus the other candidates for that spot. The picture shown today may or may not be candidates. And I now realize this post would make more sense had I shown those '10 best of' pictures. Maybe next time.

While somewhat amusing to quantify the time spent, it means little. For me, it is about enjoyment, experience the Texas countryside and personal challenge. For you, the viewer, this post adds some context and lets you know that the pictures here were not the result of a quick 30 minute run & gun session. Best case in a perfectly planned round trip, the pictures on this page would be a 402 mile trip. And, the Leica M10 Monochrom is being presented here in the best light possible - pun intended.