He probably took dozens of good photographs every year, hundreds or thousands, but only a small amount could pass a certain standard.
It’s like a bad movie with one good scene in it. Sometimes that one good scene was worth the entire movie.
Not that I have that eye or sense to know that level of quality.
he very likely did create many truly great photographs, but rejected them- artists are many times perfectionists- and won’t let something that they think is sub-perfect go public, but their scrutiny of their work is far too harsh usually-
I forget which artist it was, but he would paint something- people woudl rave about it, but he wasn’t satisfied about something, and woudl burn his painting out of disgust- who knows how many masterpieces he burned-