The one thing that most successful people do is stick with something while others move away from it. Photography is no different. When I started thinking about photography as a career, photographers informed that you needed to take 1000 pictures on slide film before you would be even considered an average photographer. Now that was in the days of film, but the point still stands in some way. Today with digital, I would think that number would be more around 25,000 images.
What's the difference? The difference is that it cost you money for the film and processing. For every 36 frames, you would spend on average at least $15 for the slide film plus the processing. This caused you to think before just pushing the trigger on anything. It forced you to think about what was best in the image and what was not right with image. Digital has changed the way we shoot since it cost us a little less in the cost of film, but the digital cost is a misleading when you consider the cost of the cameras and the storage of data. It now cost more for professional cameras and the cost of hard drive space is something that is over looked.
Some of you will say that digital is cheap, but it's not that cheap. More images shot cost you more time and energy to view and process. The cameras are more expensive and wear out faster due to the action to shoot more, plus they become outdated so quickly since we are only talking about a computer. So I would recommend newer photographers to think before taking an image to find the most important part of the image, the story.
It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer. -Albert Einstein