What do you do with limited time?
I like to reread books about subjects I try to improve myself in. Recently, I’ve reread several books going back many years in photography, especially in Landscape & Architectural photography. More so than before, I was struck by how so much advice seems to assume the leisure to take your time and even come back when desired, but what about the photographer who doesn’t have that luxury? What about the person on tour or with a schedule or a bunch of kids or a husband wife with no patience for your patience in taking the picture? Do they just grab and go or can they too produce high quality photographs of buildings, landscapes, or other subjects they my never get a chance to return to and will have a sharply limited time in which to capture an image, good or bad?
I think there are some ways to capture memorable and even artistic photos if you really want to even when your significant other is ready to pull you back to the car and threatening to leave without you.
This picture is an example of the situation. We were traveling back from a trip to visit parents and spent a day in Yellowstone Park. My wife’s time constraint was controlling and we couldn’t stop anywhere for longer than it took to see the view. We didn’t have time to savor it as I would have liked. However, even when we lived near Yellowstone, my wife was never patient with my desire to take time with my 4X5 to get a picture just right. I had to do that sort of picture taking and scouting on my own. So, what do you do when time or companions or whatever dictate that you aren’t going to be able to do what the books recommend?
Thinking back, it comes down to this:
- Preparation - if there is limited time, you need to be prepared to use it. Learn what you can about the area, look at what’s on postcards in nearby stores, and prep your camera with the right lens.
- Look - before you do ANYTHING else, LOOK. Don’t just point and shoot, but look carefully, check your meter, take spot readings if you can.
- Think - think seriously about what’s in front of you. What’s interesting? What are you feeling about what you see? What do you want to say about what you see?
- Look Again - look even more carefully. Where should you take your picture? Any challenges with light? How can you capture the feeling?
- Shoot - take a stab at capturing what you’re seeing. Bracket your shots. In exposure, in focal point, even from side to side if shooting landscapes. Take every shot as if is the only picture you’ll be able to get before you leave.
- Review - assuming you’re working digitally, look at the shot or shots you took. Are they capturing what you want to?
- Shoot Again - if you can possibly take the time, shoot some more. Try other positions. Capture other points of interest.
The more time you have, the more care you can take. Even with a short time frame, you should use a tripod if you can, so add that to ‘preparation’. Overall, the better organized you are, the better you’ll be able to capture quality images when time is short.
BUT you say, you prefer to shoot off-the-cuff. Organization just isn’t your thing. If that’s the case, you’re trusting to luck in the limited time frame case. Luck just may not be enough.
This was another shot in Yellowstone, taken to capture a view, but to do it a bit differently. The basic picture is this:
But I took this one step further in post-processing to get a more ‘painter-like’ effect which turned out even better than I expected.
This shot, also in Yellowstone, was grabbed as we were on our way to the North Entrance to leave. I had just minutes to pull over and take the shot, but everything was ready, I knew what I wanted, and I got it.
Another example of a limited time shot was at a rest area on a different trip. Again time pressure to get going and so forth, but preparation made it possible to capture the image. Three images were stitched together to make a panorama which was limited on the right by an error I made when taking the picture. As expected, I couldn’t go back to re-shoot.
None of these examples were complete when the shutter was pressed. Each one was conceived to require some post-processing to achieve the visualized print, but that work wasn’t under time pressure. What’s important was that I captured an image that made it possible to achieve the print I wanted when the time was available.
Lately, I’ve been experimenting with taking HDR images with my iPhone camera. I’ve taken panoramas with my old TREO phone and while quality was less than I wanted, it was adequate for personal use. The iPhone has made this exponentially easier so that turning out stunning HDR is easier than ever.
This raises the final point I want to make about preparation for short time frame picture taking: PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE! When time is limited, you have to know your tools intimately and do the right thing automatically. There is little time for mistakes. Practice in your backyard, in your house or apartment, get the techniques you’ll use down, learn to to handle everything when you have the TIME to make mistakes, not when you have one and only one chance to capture something.