suck to good ratio

I find that in pretty much everything I do there is a “suck to good” ratio in play. When I’m learning something new the “suck” part of the ratio hovers in the high 90s. The ratio of  “good” increases as I put in more practice time.

You may remember me telling you about my photography class with Marlaina of Grin Gallery. Her first assignment to us was to take 100 crappy photos every day.

Not 100 great shots. Not 100 interesting shots. Not 100 creative shots.

100 crappy shots

That assignment took the pressure of trying to producing good results before I had worked through my suck factor. Taking 100 photos each day was surprisingly easy. Since they didn’t have to be works of art, I didn’t stress about the subject matter. I just started experimenting with the camera settings. At first, I had around 5 good shots to 95 bad ones. As I learned how to better predict what changes I needed to make to the settings in different lighting conditions, the “suck to good” ratio started to even out. I’m looking forward to keeping the progress going.