To The Photos We Didn’t Take
This was taken at Barnsley House in the Cotswolds, I was taking a walk through the gardens and all of a sudden a herd of cows was being ushered down the street, but then they all stopped to look at me and my camera in curiosity. It’s moments like these we don’t want to miss…
It’s the photos we don’t take that haunt us for years. Fleeting ones that flashed right before our lens, around a corner, or through a doorway. I could fill an album of photos I wish I had taken. Memories from long ago that still float to the surface in my mind. And for whatever reason, I wasn’t quick enough or made a mistake of some sort that I let it slip by. I must have hundreds of moments like that — the what-if moments of life albeit a photography version. Ultimately, I stash the images I captured away on a hard drive only to see or edit them every so often. But while I upload, I remember that one that got away. That one photo I so wish I took! I think every photographer has experienced this literal pang in our creative hearts at some point. So what can we learn from not just the images we take but from the ones we don’t or wish we had?
I was thinking about this recently as I’m preparing for a trip to Europe and thinking about how I can maximize the amount of time I’m shooting freely while also being present in the moment to simply enjoy. There is a simple solution to not miss those moments we wished we had taken — ones that cannot be replicated, purely born out of the spontaneity of the moment. Those types of photographs, I think are the most real and interesting. If you don’t want to miss a moment, especially while traveling, don’t put the camera away. Sure, it’s a basic solution but do you actually consciously practice it? There’s something about having your camera at the ready that makes your photographic eye keener, more perceptive, and more open to what may unfold, to see moments we wouldn’t have otherwise. When I travel I always or at least try, to have my camera on my person, slung at my side and ready. Even if you’re out hiking or going on a gentle walk through nature, don’t stop to take it out, take a photo, then put it back away and keep going and continue that time-wasting habit the entire hike! There have been countless times here in Maui where I used to keep the camera tucked away in my backpack, stop, take it out, take a photo, put it away, and in another 50 yards do it all over again. Keep your camera out to avoid not only the shots you wouldn’t have taken otherwise and wasted time and effort. If I’m traveling abroad, I keep my camera on me with just one lens (a versatile 24-70mm f 2.8 zoom), no messing around switching out the lens, so I can easily snap something that catches my eye. If I don’t like it when I get home, no worries, that’s the beauty of digital. But at least I was open and attempted. You can be discreet about it, you don’t need to have it sloshing around your neck like a tourist, but just tucked away at the side where you can easily snap a quick shot. Street photographers know this all too well and live by this principle. Especially when you’re traveling, keep your camera always with you because you never know what you’ll see or what will call you. And on a side note, another trick to making sure you don’t miss the shot if you are used to shooting in manual mode or even aperture or shutter priority is to create a custom profile if your camera model allows it. You can create a general setting for a mid-range aperture, say f 5.6 (or whatever your preference is for a mid-range depth of field or you could choose shallower too but I find in the middle range you have a better chance to get your subject in focus), select a shutter speed appropriate to your focal length by setting the minimum in your camera settings (you can set it based on the slowest you can shoot handheld without blur around 1/60 sec) then set it to auto ISO. These custom profiles allow you to flick to them instantly when you don’t have the time to fiddle around with your settings and get the shot. It may be underexposed a bit but for the most part, if you’ve created a general profile that works for most situations you can easily fix it in Lightroom in your post-processing. Doing so allows you more freedom to not only be more present in the moment and not have to worry about your manual settings but also ensures you don’t miss the shot. Honestly, when I travel especially if I’m walking about exploring a city or in a fast-moving situation, I use aperture priority mode because it’s so much easier and the depth of field is the one thing I want to creatively control in my images versus shutter speed (which it’s own unique situation when that would be a better mode of choice such as a trolly bus, bicyclist cruising down the cobbled street, or a vintage car rolling by.)
My encouragement to you for your next adventure or holiday is to keep your camera with you always. It’s an awful feeling to think “I wish I had my camera for this!” You are a photographer, and it’s the images you take and the ones you don’t that stay with you. Another tip is to create a custom profile for a general lighting situation or time of day. If your camera doesn’t have that feature, rely on aperture and shutter priority over manual. (Aperture priority over shutter priority for most situations.) If you aren’t familiar with your camera completely, fiddling in manual mode will cost you so much time if you can’t adjust it without having to look down at the dials and screen. You will have so many more shots this way than if you mess around with settings as the light changes or the subject moves. It’s not cheating! It’s using your camera wisely to your advantage. And I can’t think of a better opportunity than when we travel to stop worrying about settings and truly enjoy and be in the moment and capture it all the same with ease. Lastly, take more photos than you think! Don’t shy away from taking hundreds of images from a holiday or your travels. Even if I come back home with hundreds of images, I’m so glad that I did because it was the ones in between, the subtleties, the slight changes that made the difference between one after another. And as they say, if you’re just beginning, you have to take at least 10,000 photos to really get to the good stuff. Your good stuff. Like an artist, sketch after sketch till they start to find resonance and a rhythm. Work that you are proud of and really start to be and feel like something, like you. You can always delete them later but I find I’m always happy that I took more than taking less. You can learn so much by taking a lot of images, even if you don’t actually use or share them for anything. So don’t be shy and follow where your lens leads you.
Alanna
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