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Fun fact: 10,000 seconds fit in less than 3 hours, as many minutes make up almost a week, and 10k hours take more than a year. But what is ten thousand pictures?
I got a new camera this spring along with plenty of free time to reconnect with my life-long hobby. Since then, I’ve been shooting like there was no tomorrow.
I owned a lot of gear back in the day, and the more comprehensive the hardware pressed against my eye, the less confident I felt about just taking a shot.
The new camera felt like a downgrade in comparison: cropped sensor, fixed 35 mm lens, AF, well… slow AF. But it was tactile, pocketable and just fun to hold.
That toy-ish point-and-shoot vibe made me drop the “serious photographer” shit and just enjoy taking random pictures without any need to justify each frame.
Five months later, I noticed the image file names went over 9999 and started from zero again. Turns out I’d been shooting 3 photos per hour, or one every 20 minutes.
Was that much? Well, in the analogue era, 10,000 shots could span a lifetime. While with modern gear you could just mindlessly burst 10k frames in under 10 minutes.
Of course, 80% of those 10,000 shots got either deleted in-camera or ended up in the trash during post. The rest is still garbage, but I love it and publish anyway.
In the end a number is just a number. 10k steps don’t make an athlete, 10k hours don’t spark a genius, and 10k shots do not get you a contract with Magnum Photos.
Not everything in life needs to be a goal or a challenge. Sometimes all that matters is if those 10k steps, hours or shots were fun enough to convince you to do 10k more.
