Seeing The Shot - Finding The Shot - Making The Shot

 The morning began with a great deal of potential. The sky held a brilliant blue streaked with a combination of high thin clouds and softer, rounder varieties. For a photographer looking for an opportunity to create a black and white photograph, the conditions played well into my plans. The problem was, I was not seeing the shot.

I had returned to a favorite location where photo ops have presented themselves before. On this day, I managed to take a few photos which proved themselves subpar duplications of previous shots I had made months before. I was looking for something newer, fresher, that stood out from the ordinary. I just could not see it. After a while, I decided to call it a shoot and head on home.

I turned onto the main road and enjoyed the speed generated breeze that whipped through my Jeep. A few miles later out of the corner of my eye, I spied a row of trees that stretched across the top edge of a shallow rise a few hundred yards or so off the road to the west. The sky, burnished with high streaking clouds, almost seemed to glow with a brilliance I had not yet seen that day. A quarter mile later, I reversed course and eventually pulled off the road where a commanding view of the scene prevailed.

Within a few moments, I had my photo of the day. What made the shot, was the ability to see it, find it, and make it.

Seeing the shot often comes suddenly many times out of the corner of your eye. Something stands apart that catches your interest. A shape, a reflection, movement, contrasts, something familiar yet different, something that stands apart from the routine and ordinary background. Seeing it comes in flashes. It just appears out of nowhere sometimes. Its recognizable but not necessarily familiar. The more you photograph, the more your eye develops that ability to see beyond the routine, and through the ordinary, to lock onto that which stands apart.

Finding the shot is the refining process the photographer goes through once he sees the shot. Our eyes see in a wide angled view and can be confused by all the additional clutter that surrounds the potential. Finding the shot is where you as the photographer wade through the clutter to visually define the shot. Which lens to use, exposure values, where to stand, low angle, higher angle, left or right, where to place the horizon; low in the frame or higher up. In finding the shot, you define the parameters and boundaries that frames and refines what your eye initially saw.

Making the shot requires patience. It is when after you define the parameters, you wait for the defining moment to capture the image. Waiting on the light, clouds to shift their position, should I return when the light is lower in the sky or higher, these among other intangible factors all work together to complete the photographic process.

All of these becomes instinctive over time. They do not always require conscious thought, but they do require a sixth sense of sort, the kind of sense that just happens and is difficult to define or explain. When you see it, you know it. When you find it, its obvious, when you make it you know the time is now and then walk away with a good feeling having captured something of the heart.

Being in the Moment: Finding the Right Place to Stand

 Many factors influence what makes a great photograph, choosing where to stand certainly counts as one of if not the most important. It sounds so basic, yet is perhaps one of the most overlooked and encompassing of all the factors because it transcends routine 'raise the camera and shoot' techniques and requires the photographer to make a discerning decision.

A wrong or indifferent perspective can cause a potentially great photograph to look ordinary and subpar. The best perspective can be something as simple as moving a few inches to the right or left, or kneeling down to ground level, or standing on the bumper of your car to get a little higher. It can also become as demanding as hiking across a damp field of waist high weeds, or climbing to the top of a ridge, or wading out into the middle of a stream, or lying down in a muddy field. Finding the right place to stand is the first foundational element of capturing a great photograph.

Other elements come into play as well. Time of day, lighting conditions or waiting for the light to shift, sun angles, season, weather, type of lens, exposure values, all of these and more serve as supporting elements from where to begin which is deciding where to stand. 

Before snapping the shutter, the first thing I do is to look at the edges of the frame. Is what is there necessary for the success of the photo? Are there distractions? If I move to the right or left or up or down or will swapping out my lense improve the framing...what about walking to the other side of the field? Will doing so improve the perspective?

Making a decision on where to stand comes with experience and eventually becomes instinctive. Always shooting from eye level and/or being unwilling to move around to make the required effort to discover the best perspective is a recipe of the ordinary. 

 Before long, you begin to more clearly see the elements of a scene and determine what is important and what is not. Observing what is there and then determining if what is there is required for the image you see in your mind is what helps develop the ability to visualize the shot before you take it. You saw something that caught your interest, but in every situation there are distracting and unnecessary elements. Fine tuning those initial visual evaluations by making the effort to find the right place to stand will refine and improve the final results.

 

The image on the left is one such photo. Taken at sunrise on a blustery late-fall day, this gravel road led to a rustic farmhouse nestled amongst a grove of trees. The main road ran perpendicular to this gravel road, but from the intersection of the two, the perspective was not right. Too much road to work with, and too far away from the main subject, so instead I walked a couple hundred yards or so down the road and stopped at the base of a shallow rise that rolled over and dipped a few yards on the other side. Fence posts lined the sides and cornstubble filled the pastures on either side. I tried a low down perspective which did not work; it flattened out the road too much. I looked at the framing from eye level which was not quite right, so I raised the tripod neck as high as it would go which gave me a few more inches higher than my eye level. It was just enough to capture the hump and dip and include the length of the old road as it flowed into the scene. Shifting to the right just a little, allowed the first fence post on the right to come into view which helped frame the scene. The rest was simply to wait on the light and set the correct exposure. Finding the right place to stand is what made this image work.

Being in the moment and finding the right place to stand is what separates an informed photographer with a trained eye, from an average picture taker. Not unlike a structure needing a strong foundation on which to be built, a great photograph requires a strong foundation as well, and that begins with knowing where to stand.

Being in The Moment: A Time To Reflect

 There are moments afield with camera in hand when the experience stands apart separated from the ordinary and the routine by extraordinary circumstances. During those moments, words rarely capture the emotional uplifting one may sense. The feeling is often greater that what is observed. It becomes a time of reflection when memories from long ago are resurrected, and the hopes and dreams of tomorrow take on new importance. There is a blending of the two, however brief they may seem, when the events of nature bring into focus those fond memories of the past and those yet to come.

There are times my heart is coaxed into action by an overwhelming need to reconnect with what nature has to offer. Yet, far too easy it becomes to ignore such callings, and far too often have I missed extraordinary moments of the heart. Encouraging myself to seek out a chance rendezvous more often than not results in rediscovering the importance of reconnecting with nature. 

As I have grown older my heart has grown more thirsty for such things. Quenching that thirst can best be accomplished by making the time to place myself where nature offers, in all of her wonderful blends, the sweet air of awakening.

Being in the moment is about slowing down to observe and reflect on what nature gives, so as to open the places of the heart where memories are stored along with the emotions of a single moment in time.

Capturing the defining instant with a camera when light and heart are joined, well, that is just a small part of the rewards one receives for having been there.