Ever shot 100 exposures of the same thing only to find yourself hating the editing process because you can’t decide which frame is the best, even though they all look the same?

I have.

With digital capabilities in today’s photography world, it’s tough to curb the desire to shoot far too many frames. I’ve been battling—and I’m sure most of the other Flux photogs are as well—since I started photojournalism.

But I had a revelation recently. As I stood atop a belay ledge snapping shots of my buddy climbing up the wall with 300 feet of air beneath his ass, I realized my focus would be best suited belaying him. It was either belay him safely to the top, or tell his parents I got a really great shot of him right before he plunged to his demise.

Breaking the digital vacuum habit is like quitting cigarettes, however, it doesn't happen over night. While there’s no nicorette gum to ease my addiction, there are analog cameras and the highly influential “decisive-moment photography.”

Equipped with my dad’s old Nikonos camera and a self-imposed limit of two frames per day, I’m a recovering Hoover. “Decisive-moment photography” has trained my eye to capture better images in which I consider the composition and event of each frame with much more detail. Though I shoot more than two frames with my DSLR in hand, my image tally is fewer than it used to be. I now enjoy more memory space and download times a fraction of what they used to be.

And my climbing partners are a lot more comfortable now too.