Photodoto » Blog Archive » Psst! Want to know a secret? The best photographers make bad photographs, too.:

While I'm far from 'the best', I have been known to take more than one absolutely awful photo. I tend towards the viewpoint that what makes you good, as a photographer, aren't your worst photos, but your best - you're judged on what you pick to keep. As I improve as a photographer, I get more photos to keep (well, I keep everything, but I only show the good ones - even a bad photo can have uses, like the one above...), less that feel like absolute bombs.

I was talking with someone about my portfolio the other day, and he commented that he'd have expected there to be more of it. My portfolio is fairly small; It only has in it, the images of which I'm most proud, the ones that, when I first looked at them, made me say 'wow!'. The ones that gave me hope in the first place that I might be able to make a living off this sort of stuff.

I think kenny Rogers may have said it best: "... the secret to survivin' is knowin what to throw away and knowing what to keep."