Shaking out the Cobwebs

May 1, 2008 | 9:51 am

Yesterday morning, I happened to read this post by The Online Photographer in my RSS feed. I read through it, and then didn’t think much about it.

Until last night.

While I was sitting in my dining room processing images of the flipped truck.

In cricket, a game I grew up playing and watching, we often talked about a batter getting his “eye in.” In a game where a batter can play for 7 or 8 hours, this is an important thing. Each cricket ground is different, the pitch conditions can change dramatically from one day to the next, the way the ball comes out of the bowler’s hand…it takes a little while for a batter to make all those adjustments, to get the rust off, and get in a hitting zone. And when their eye is “in,” it can be a beautiful thing.

So, last night, I rushed myself. Sara was waiting for me in the car, and I felt this pressure to get the shots, and get back to process them. I hurried around looking for angles and interesting lines, etc., and eventually fired off about 70-80 frames. I was just barely getting the rust off. The TOP article made perfect sense. Right as I was getting in the car to go back to the house, I was just getting into a groove, and starting to “see” better.

And sitting at the table, processing the images, I kicked myself. I noticed the shot I *should* have gotten, but was in too much of a hurry to capture.

I was standing right next to that fire truck. I should have just gotten permission to climb on top, and gotten a wide-angle view of the flipped cargo. It may have been “the shot.” Maybe not. But, I would have at least had that angle to choose from. I’ll never know.

All of this is rambling, I know, but I learned an important lesson: Get those first 50 shots out of the way, get the rust off, and slow down to think and to see. Mistakes like this make me hungry. I will do my best not to experience that missed-shot feeling again!

Tags: learning curve, mistakes.

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