Hurry up and take your time

I spent a large part of this past year searching through my photo archives and working on my photo textbook and not shooting as much as I should have. Then I went to Sri Lanka and made all the mistakes again, I had long learned I should avoid. One of them is to rush things.

A lot of the photos I capture are fleeting moments. They tend to involve people, animals, vehicles: things that move. So it is often important to work quickly. But to get good photos you still need to take your time. Don’t shoot 10 frames of the same person standing by the side of the road before checking that your exposure, focus, depth of field etc. are what you want them to be for this particular shot. You can get one shot on “autopilot” to make sure you don’t miss the shot but then check if you can improve the shot by tweaking your focus or your depth of field or your exposure. And if those work: how is your framing? And does the photo really work better in landscape rather than portrait or were you just in too much of a rush to try turning the camera? The Bauhaus-folks always said “less is more”. Well, sometimes, by shooting less, you get less of the same but in the end you get more good stuff :-)