Waiting for a subject when the light is good

- They say that patience is a virtue, and while I don't know if that's always true, I do know that patience is almost always a great photographic tool, and this week on The Practicing Photographer, we're going to look at a process of trying your patience to get a good shot. Here's what I'm talking about. I saw this shaft of light on the sidewalk in Florence, and thought, boy it'd look really cool if someone was walking through it, but no one was walking through it, so I stood there and I waited, and I waited actually quite a long time because people would walk around it, they'd walk to the side of it, and I waited long enough, and eventually, this guy came walking through in the exact spot that I wanted.

I had to adjust my framing a little bit. I wasn't set up on a tripod with a particular image in mind. I just knew that there was some way that someone was going to interact with this shaft of light, and I was gonna like it. I was able to see him approach, so as things started to develop, I was able to get in position and get the shot that I wanted. I had already decided I wanted shallow, not super shallow, but shallow-ish depth of field and chosen an aperture accordingly, but I got this image because I waited, and that's what we're going to look at in a few examples here. Here's another one. In this case, it was another example of recognizing nice light, shooting into the sun and seeing this great glare off the sidewalk, and what caught my eye was that, though it's shadowy down below, as people are walking by, they're all back lit up above, and so I thought, well, something nice is gonna happen here, and so I waited.

I shot a lot, and then this one stuck out, just because of the lighting. Here's a case of subject matter drawing my attention in the first place. This is in San Francisco. A new subway tunnel is being built under this street, so they've got the street all torn up, and they had this huge crane there in between these two buildings, and I thought, well, that's easy to compose around. I stuck it in the dead center, and only then did I realize that there's all this stuff happening in front. I need the right, I don't know, organization of people in front, and finally things just happened in such a way that there was this guy right in the center, and I actually liked that this guy is over here to the left, but, he's wearing a nice, bright blue coat or something, and so he just kind of anchors the crane.

And that was just waiting. I wasn't waiting very long, just a minute or so. In a rapidly changing situation, you may not have to wait that long. Here's another situation of recognizing a shaft of light, and I really thought that pigeon was going to work for me. I thought he was going to walk right to the apex of the triangle, but he didn't. He wandered around then flew away, so then I thought this woman with the red hair was gonna, I dunno, pass through in some way that made a nice composition, but she just stopped for awhile. Finally, I got lucky, and a guy with no other people around him came and rode through on a bicycle.

I shot probably 100 frames standing here, and I waited a long time. Just when something would be set up the way that I wanted, someone would walk in the way, and it's, you can't help but take it personally. You think they're trying to mess up your shot, and they're not, and you need to remember that and stay calm. It's also important not to stand there and look through your camera the whole time, or if you're going to, be sure you keep your off-eye open because that's how you see what's coming your way. The problem with having the camera right here is I can see what's coming my way this way. I can't see what's coming this way. So I set up the shot, I learn it really well, I take it down and I wait.

The other thing about having the camera down is if it's up, people become afraid, "Oh, I don't want to interrupt your picture," and you can't really say, "No, no, wait." "You are the picture!" So, that keeps traffic flowing normally. I'm working with a small camera so it's a little less obtrusive, so I don't have people trying to dodge my camera so much. Here was a case where I saw a bare wall with a structure on it and knew that I could easily balance that in a square against someone else. There were a lot of bright colors walking around, so I just waited. Here was another try at the same thing.

A lot of people moving through. It took a lot of waiting just to get the blank wall, and then to wait for a blank wall that had the right organization of people. A rug salesman who was showing me rug after rug, and I'd probably gone through half a dozen of these before I realized these guys are doing the same thing every time. All I have to do is figure out the point of it that I want, and I know that they're gonna set up my shot for me, and so I sat here, and I shot a lot through the process and then finally got this. Obviously this one's been adjusted.

The others have not. So, waiting for the shot is critical and especially in street shooting. The best street shooters in the world, you dig through all of Cartier Bresson, and you can tell that he set up the shot ahead of time and then just had to wait. The decisive moment was not something he saw in real time. It was something he waited for and planned and encouraged. What's cool about this is it's also an exercise in pre-visualizing. Identifying a potential shot and really trying to figure out in your head what you want it to be is a really good skill to develop.

Now, you want to stay flexible on that because in an ever-changing world something much better than what you you were imaging might come along, and you want to say open to it. You don't want to miss it because you were so focused on a particular thing happening, but practicing this is not only a great way to get cool shots, it's a great way to develop your visualization skills, and that's going to impact all kinds of photography.