What makes you stop in your tracks, pull out your camera or phone and pause long enough to take a picture? Is it seeing something you’ve never seen before? Is it a need to document a moment? To prove that you were here, that you were alive? Is it seeing something so beautiful that you want to keep that memory intact? Is it a need to express yourself in an unspoken way? Or is it a need to create something?
All the reasons above are equally valid, and I will stop and take photos for any and all of those reasons. And no, I’m not immune from the occasional ‘I was here’ trophy image; those also have their place. These things are WHY you are taking a photo.
What about HOW?
However, the thing I am trying hardest at, though, is not necessarily WHY I take a photo, but HOW. I’m not talking about technical matters per se, but more about intentionality.
The act of seeing, stopping, taking out the camera, framing, and finally pressing the button and taking an image, is a series of very small decisions. Those decisions should all be deliberate and intentional and not left up to chance or your camera’s AI.
The rise of the auto-mode
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not dissing the amazing things that modern mirrorless cameras can do. You could give a monkey a camera, and it could take a great photo. Auto-focus has been around since film days, so it’s nothing new. Now AI is being integrated into mirrorless cameras such as the newest Canon EOS R1, and the autofocus systems almost require no skill by the photographer.
This is great, on the one hand, especially for those of us who are paid to take photos. We are less likely to miss the money shot with this extra technology. However, we shouldn’t let this distract us from making artistic decisions still when we put the camera up to our eye (if we even bother to still do that!).
Food for thought
If you have time to take a moment to quiet your mind and really think about the steps and decisions involved before you take a photo, it will eventually become automatic in your own mind and hands, not just in the camera. Of course, some subjects lend themselves better to this than others. However, if you practice on stationary subjects you’ll be able to apply them equally well to spur of the moment fast moving subjects as well later on.
These are the questions you should ask yourself before you take any photo:
Why am I stopping here? What about this scene is grabbing my attention and how can I best interpret that as a single image?
How do I want someone to feel when they see this photo? What mood do I want to convey?
What technical decisions will get me to create that mood?
Is there any part of the scene I want to crop out? Or anything that has to be included? What is the ‘hero’ of the image?
Am I here at the best time of day? Would returning at another time of day or season give me a better shot?
Why am I choosing a vertical orientation over landscape?
What aperture is going to give me the depth of field I want? Or do I want some movement and play with the shutter speed?
Do I want to expose a bit brighter? or underexpose? How will that affect the mood?
In this image that I was taking, the twisting road was the feature I most wanted to highlight. The light wasn’t correct at this time of day, so I returned at sunset.
In this image (above), the twisting road was the feature I most wanted to highlight. The light wasn’t correct at this time of day, so I returned at sunset.
Here are my favourite two shots from that same location taken at sunset with both a telephoto lens and a wide angle:
Pre-planned shoots
These same steps and thought processes can help with a planned shoot just as much as an off-the-cuff one. Absolutely nothing in the image below was an accident. It was very much produced as it was taken as part of a shoot advertising the region of Valencia for a relocation company. Everything was planned ahead, in fact, nothing about this shot is spontaneous, we shot it in January and the model was slightly chilly in just a t-shirt!
I still used the same thought process to make this photograph in my mind ahead of the shoot. It wasn’t a large production or difficult shoot, however, the pre-planning helped it to go smoothly and achieve the results we all wanted.
We planned:
The location
The model
The time of day and where the sun would be in relation to the landscape
The colour of the T-shirt to contrast with the orange rocks
Even so, it remains one of my favourite images, and adding a human into the photograph adds that extra splash of context and interest, in my opinion.
Deliberate practice
By doing these things, you are effectively slowing down your thought process, and making conscious deliberate decisions about the photograph, rather than just snapping away. This should also have the result of capturing a greater number of good and great photos and spending less time trawling through files that will go straight into the trash.
It’s much more similar to how people used to shoot using film because it was expensive and a finite resource. In the digital days since, there’s still a lot to be said for that mentality.
Popular science tells us that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in anything, and that “practice makes perfect”. I can tell you after spending 30-plus years learning and playing a musical instrument that that is not actually true. Only perfect practice makes perfect. If you practice something poorly or incorrectly you will just become better at doing it badly. Repetition alone does nothing.
Photography is jazz on paper
That’s where deliberate practice comes in. Photography is a little different to learning an instrument. We don’t have scales to learn, and hundreds of years of repertoire. I would say it’s more similar to playing jazz. It’s essentially an improvised art form; we are responding in real-time or creating on the spot. This is why it’s both incredibly simple and also incredibly difficult at the same time.
We need to learn the technicalities well enough to be able to move instinctually at the right moment. But to get to that point demands patience, time, thought, and slowing down the steps. That is what deliberate practice is.
Next time you stop to take a photo, before you put your camera up to your eye or lift your phone up, pause, and really think about what you’re seeing and why you’re taking a photo, and how you want that photo to look and feel. As Ansel Adams famously said: “you don’t take a photo, you make a photo” and making a photo begins with intentionality.
