Soon after taking this photograph, I slipped on the embankment and slid into the water. What fun. Fortunately the camera did not get wet. No matter how hard I try to slow down and work in a deliberate manner, I find myself rushing about, working too rapidly. If I would slow down the pace to a crawl, sit and just observe, the compositions would be tightened, simplified, improved. The metering would be more accurate. The depth of field would be greater. I would notice bits of trash in the foreground, twigs and stray sticks in the background.
I could get by with taking three exposures of a scene, like in the old days of film bracketing, instead of a dozen identical photographs which only confuse and take up computer memory. Often I think of taking a film camera along, taking the digital to use as a meter, and recording onto film the images. That way, at the end of the roll, I would have twenty-four or thirty-six well exposed, properly composed photographs with the best form of archiving, the slide or the film.
Until then, I will continue at the urgent pace of the aging hurdler going for another record.
I have always been amazed by the photographers who will take so much time to set up a shot. I'm afraid my short little attention span would cause my head to explode if I ever tried that. I see the shots I take when my eyes take them in, whenever I try to slow down and compose, I always hate the finished product. For me, it has to happen as it happens.
ReplyDeleteI would guess that makes us kindred souls, you and I.
The years spent in the journalistic style is too ingrained in me and thus it is difficult to move into the deliberate style of the casual landscape photographer. It used to unnerve me when I would go out with my old friend Bob Jones. He would take forever to set up, focus,refocus over and over. I would already have made my photographs,packed up and waiting in the car for him to finish up. I tend to be more comfortable in the Galen Rowell style as opposed to the Ansel Adams style.
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