As a wedding photographer I take what I would consider to be an average number of photos at a wedding. I consider it average simply because I know other professional wedding photographers who take a lot more, and I know others who do not take nearly as many photos as I do.
Depending on the bridal party, location, times and so many other factors, I normally shoot between 700 and 1200 images. I’ve topped 2000 on a couple of rare occasions. From this somewhere between 60 and 100 images make it to the album. Let’s keep it easy and say 10% are used in the album.
How does this compare with the Olympics opening ceremony. The photography team from Reuters have released their figures. They had 12 photographers in the stadium, 9 outside plus 6 in Tiananmen Square and on the Great Wall. In the four hours of the opening ceremony they took around 18000 photographs. Of these only 850 went live i.e. went to their clients – that’s about 5%. Of those 850, any given publication would be expected to use a maximum of 3 pictures.
That blows me away. Only 1 in 6000 images get used.