Following up on the last post, in a similar style let’s look at the bads of the New York adventure.
No End to Run and Gunning
Probably the most obvious issue was the lack of consideration put into the photographs overall. There were a few occasions where I took a moment to think about the frame before releasing the shutter, but a good 95% of my shots were taken without much thought. Realistic expectations are important, and I was there for a vacation, not a series of photo walks, so I should set a target for the next occasion.
Overshooting
I’m a fan of overshooting. Recently I started to cover events of the company I work for (blog post later) and probably the most important lesson I’ve learned so far is that there’s no such thing as too much coverage. Yet, in case of a vacation it can be counterproductive. It has a lot to do with point 1) but it’s not the same. Run and gunning versus considerate photography is more about not slowing down, whereas overshooting is not taking a break from shooting. Which means that you are stick in the photography mood for your entire day in which you started clicking around.
Lack of Visual Concept
This is the most important issue with the photos I took. There was no creative vision or concept. I don’t want to overthink this point, it can be as simple as a turbocharged “scene detection” moder cameras do. After all, even the longest vacation is just a sequence of events, each having a relatively static lighting, subject matter and scale. Also, in each of these sequences there are patterns – there’s no single vacation without street photography for instance -, and it should be clear at each location where you are in terms of the setting and also the kind of photography you’re up to.
Pedestrian (Safe) Style
Actually, I’ve been shooting the same way for 10k+ images. 35-200mm range, static images, no diagonals, everything in focus, no tension anywhere. It’s kind of boring, really. I should be more experimental with angles, exposure, and depth of field – this is difficult with a travel zoom, but I had two primes with me. There’s not much “me” in these photographs. I don’t know how much it has to do with the fact that I had a travelzoom onboard – probably if I were more limited in focal length, I would have extracted more out of that “limitation”?
In the next and final entry I’ll lay out some steps for the next outing to follow, to avoid the above mistakes…