It's always a bit daunting to arrive somewhere with a work agenda, dog tired after an overnight flight, and in a country and a season where daylight only stretches from 9:30 a.m. till a little after 4 p.m. During the six days I was in Iceland we had rain and overcast skies on three. In situations like this, when you have the free time to shoot, you might consider moving and exploring constantly and quickly instead of just drifting along at a leisurely pace and dallying over a small handful of shooting opportunities.
As I mentioned yesterday I shot a huge amount of frames while there. A bit over a thousand images per day. I shot this way with the idea of going back later, in post production, and panning for whatever "gold" there might be in and amongst the mud....But more importantly, I shot an image any time I was the least bit interested in whatever was in front of me rather than waiting around for divine inspiration to strike.
Regardless of format the real beauty of digital is having endless capacity for images at your disposal. So, in this post and the last one combined you are seeing far fewer than a half a percent of the images I took in a very compressed time frame. There are many more I could post and which I like just as much. The takeaway being that working fast and practicing seeing are two valuable skills to have.
Another advantage goes to people who can move fast, with endurance, and don't mind carrying gear with them. My suggestions for successful immersion in a location are: Walk a lot. Move constantly. Shoot anything that catches your eyes. Move some more. Explore off the beaten path. Fill those memory cards.
Shoot fast and think about it later.
ReplyDeleteJust the opposite of my practice.
And I miss many shots that way.
I think about the subject.
Move around it. Think about it more.
You would think I was shooting 8x10 film.
My wife has followed your advice for years.
Comes back with results that are often
more interesting than mine. Not always
but often enough.
Shoot fast and often. I'll try.
You have the advantage of automatically seeing lighting and composition. When some of us take that approach the result can be 7,000 reasons to ask, “What was I thinking?”
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't be surprised, if I looked through the pictures my wife took on our 2016 trip, that she also has one like yours of those two doors. She seems to have a sense for patterns and contrasts similar to yours. In Copenhagen in 2018 she was taken by the variety of downspouts.
ReplyDeleteBeing retired, the idea of reviewing 1000 shots per day would be too much like work instead of an enjoyable activity. I rarely surpass 200 shots in a day. Something that looks interesting doesn't necessary mean it's photo worthy. Of course photo worthiness is completely subjective. Something that I would pass up, could be a keeper to someone else!
ReplyDeleteWow, Kirk, what a set and what a trip that must have been.
ReplyDeleteKarmagroovy, You're putting too much thought into the process. The old paradigm of slow shooting and leisurely selection was based on the fact that film shooting was expensive, time consuming, arduous, expensive and the need to husband resources was critical. The process is much, much more fluid now and much cheaper once you've bought the gear. I toss everything into a folder and open up a large screen of thumbnails and then start scanning with my eyes until something catches my attention. Drop that file into the "develop" module of Lightroom, spend two or three minutes post processing and then move on. When it starts to feel like work I just step away.
ReplyDeleteIf we can rid ourselves of the "precious object" construct that's hobbled experienced photographers who still remember the film days we too can move faster and get good results into the bargain. And remember, I photograph too much so if I see one great frame and 20 very similar ones I never waste time on "what about this one?" or "maybe I should carefully inspect them all..." It saves a lot of mental space...