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Comment by mikewarot | Hacker News Reader

If you just start taking photos (with permission) and keep taking them eventually your subjects will get used to you being there and start acting normally again in most cases. It doesn't cost anything to take photos, except your time, so just keep spamming the trigger. Each exposure is a chance at a good photo, for the most part.

The thing about family photos that's most important is to have THE NAMES of everyone in the photo, not "mom" or "lucy"... actual full names, so that someone in a generation or two can actually understand who is who. My wife's family had that... but then the photos were ripped out of the album, and all context was lost. 8(

As much as possible, I've got every face tagged in my photos so sproutlet has something useful when the time comes.

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> It doesn't cost anything to take photos, except your time, so just keep spamming the trigger

This, this, this, and this!!!

My mother is the one that takes the initiative of taking pictures of people during events (whether important or just small outings). What she has a hard time understanding is that you must spam the trigger. She tries to frame the picture perfectly, and everyone on their most photogenic faces. Then, she takes ONE shot and oh... somebody closed their eyes a bit. "Let's go for another one, everyone go back in place!"

What she doesn't understand is that the best and most memorable pictures isn't the one where people are smiling straight into the camera. It's when people are doing something they enjoy and don't even notice the camera and don't do a perfect model pose.

I'm lucky if I delete only 9 of the 10 photos I took!

I’ve actually found a lot of benefit in the exact opposite. I started shooting film which does have a pretty big cost per trigger press and it has forced me to consider each shot a lot more.

For me, I found having hundreds of photos on my DSLR’s SD card a daunting task and the raw photos would sit for months before I’d get around to reviewing them (if I even bothered at all).

Sitting down and spending an evening developing/scanning/converting negatives, however, I find rather enjoyable.

To each their own; I think the important thing is to find a workflow that works for you so you can capture as many memories as possible!

For most people, taking pictures is done with their smartphone - which is good enough, right!

My view is that striving for a perfect shot is counter-productive as you will better reminisce the memories by having taken a random picture of someone doing a goofy thing with a weird face.

I usually take 10 seconds after taking the pictures to discard those that don't deserve to be saved. In contrast, my mother, who strives for perfect pictures, has a lot more duplicate pics than I do.

> > It doesn't cost anything to take photos, except your time, so just keep spamming the trigger

> This, this, this, and this!!!

Except that time is a huge cost. Merely taking the photos is quick, but sorting through them is slow and mind-bogglingly boring. The more photos you take, the larger the chaos is (and the more space gets wasted). If you are the kind of person who diligently categorizes photos right after they are taken, then sure, go ahead spamming the trigger; otherwise you'll just end up with with exhausted storage, and less and less motivation (over time) to start sorting through that ever growing heap of manure.

> Merely taking the photos is quick, but sorting through them is slow and mind-bogglingly boring.

I said this in another comment, but after a typical shooting it takes about 10 seconds - not more - to sort through everything. We don't take hundreds of pictures...

The alternative is taking only one picture and calling it a day - whether you made an ugly face or not. A couple of times I've asked people to take a picture of somebody else and me, and sometimes they only take one picture and either me or that person makes an ugly face... If he pressed the button 4 times I'm sure there would have been a fine picture.

>eventually your subjects will get used to you being there and start acting normally again

This is my issue. Social media has made this much more difficult for me, people generally want to look good in all the pictures. I never post them anywhere, maybe to a small group chat, but still it's the natural instinct many people have when they see a camera out.

So I find people getting self-conscious or otherwise uncomfortable/annoyed when I try to get candid shots. But I know they will appreciate them later, and often do, but it's hard to push past this initial reaction.

These threads have been helpful and motivating -- I will try to reference them later with family to explain why I'm taking all these pictures, and why they shouldn't stress too much about how they look.

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