Hey Comrads, I haven't written a personal post in a while because I've been over here shooting weddings + engagements like mad, meeting new friends via Social Boston Sports (very important for self employed peeps like myself), keeping my veggie garden alive, and booking the coolest couples for 2013 (mega awesome "how we met" stories).
In the midst of my editing, I decided to browse National Geographic (sidenote: it was always my dream to shoot for them… I could totally picture myself scaling a city wall or busting through the jungle in South America just to get the sick shot). See, I always try and keep something besides Facebook as my "go to" when I need a mind break. I'm usually looking for inspiration and nature seems to inspire me the most, so naturally I go to my favorite site, Nationalgeographic.com. Today I came across this post about patience. Something of which I've vastly improved upon over the years, but something that continually needs to be worked on.
Patience is something that I've really been improving upon this wedding season in particular. In my quest to figure out what the most important elements of wedding photography are, patience definitely is at the top of the list. Over the years I've had to consciously tell myself to stop shooting blindly.
Now I've come to that turning point in my photography where I am not so worried about technically shooting the scene. Admittedly, I shoot on manual ALL OF THE TIME! When I first got into photography I was shooting black and white film and the teacher told me that we all need to be able to shoot on manual. Well I learned to do it and now I can't go back to auto settings. This could be good or bad… it depends on the situation. Now my camera and all of it's hundreds of settings is starting to become second nature in quickly trying to figure out what lighting ratio I need in order to nail the lighting in the room for the next 4 minutes.
I'm also learning to just hang out and observe the story, "chill n watch" if you will. Like thinking before you speak, you should CNW before you shoot.
"chill n watch" = If you just slow down, chill out and just watch the scene/people... you can compose a thoughtful piece of art much easier than just shooting and praying you've got a good shot in there somewhere.
Patience in photography is so important whether you're a professional with a fancy shmancy DSLR or you're just a guy with an iphone. Do me a favor, chill out and just watch the next time you compose an image, let me know if it works for you!
{watch video here} --> Patience by NatGeo
{This shot of a young and wild 26 year old April K... Camping with my (fancy for me at the time) Nikon D200… just CNW'ing}
Peace, Love & Patience,
April K