This post is accompanied by some of the work I shot over the last 4 weeks in Kenya. What a trip it’s been. I hope you enjoy the images!
My grand-dad was a Scout. At the time he was the highest decorated man in the scouting movement in the UK, a movement whose motto is “Be Prepared.” I like to think some of that desire to be ready for the unexpected has come down to me in my DNA, though I confess to stray from the ideal and tend to be more of a “Be Less Un-Prepared” kind of guy.
The last month in Kenya (I got back yesterday) felt like one big effort at being less un-ready. No matter what I did, I was improvising the entire time. I’d be ready for the lion to move left and he’d move right. I’d be ready for a sighting on one side of the Land Cruiser and the action would be on the other. Or I’d be ready for one exposure scenario, like panning at 1/15s, only to wish I was on 1/1000 instead to freeze the action rather than blur it. These things can’t always be helped; they’re part of the challenge and there’s no meaningful way to prepare for it all. I do, however, have some ideas about being a little less un-ready for the preventable stuff.
Ready Your Gear
Same Things, Same Pockets.
Put your batteries and cards in the same place every time. Same with cameras and lenses. Develop a system so you’re not taking up valuable time. Ideally you can reach into your bag and grab what you need without taking your eyes off your scene. The “throw all you crap into whatever pocket you can find” is great for the free-spirited, but it’s no way to photograph.
Camera On, Every Time.
When I pick up my camera, it has become my habit to flick the camera on so that it’s live and ready by the time it gets to my eye. It doesn’t take much, but when the camera is at your eye it needs to be as ready as you are.
No Lens Caps!
When I get to my location I take my front lens caps off and throw them in my duffle bag and they don’t come out again until I’m packing to leave. I shoot with 3 lenses on 3 bodies and none of them ever have a lens cap. Lens coatings are so good now that there’s a way better chance I’ll miss important shots by using a lens cap than there is that I’ll scratch a lens without one. In 40 years I’ve only ever scratched one lens. Imagine how many fleeting moments I might have missed in that time.
Battery Grips.
Each of my bodies has a battery grip that holds 2 batteries. I change batteries when I can, but this means I always a have a spare: not in my pocket but in the camera ready to go.
Custom Settings.
I don’t use a lot of these, but there’s one I find helpful and if you use your imagination you might find others. Most of the time I’m exposing manually. I set my shutter and my aperture, and let my ISO float with auto-ISO and adjust with EC Comp. Most of the time I’m at 1/000 and wide open, f/2.8 or f/4.0. But I’ve got a custom button set so that if I suddenly need to pan with movement at 1/50 and f/10, I can get there quickly. One spin of the dial instead of 2 or 3, and I’m ready.
Ready Your Mind
This one’s harder to pin down, and even harder to do: even more important than being ready with your gear is being ready in your thinking.
When you approach your scene are you thinking “Oh my god it’s a (insert subject here)!” or are you thinking about what you’re going to do with that subject? Are you looking at the light and making exposure choices before you even raise the camera? Is it a wide shot or a tighter shot? What are the composition options? Can you anticipate when the moment might happen and what you’ll do when it does, or—just as often—what you’ll do if it doesn’t play out the way you think.
Sometimes we have all the time in the world to work a scene, but other times it all happens very quickly. The more ready you can be, or the less un-ready, the better. When a scene unfolds, no matter what you’re shooting, there is often no time to unzip the camera bag, pull out the camera, and raise it to your eye, much less to fiddle with turning it on only to find that it’s already on but the lens cap is still…drat, the moment’s gone. Maybe next time.
Create habits that allow you to get to the good stuff faster. Keep the camera out of the bag until there is no chance you’ll need. It is more important that you protect the moment than that you protect your gear.
What about you? What do you do to make sure you’re ready (or a little less un-ready) when the moment arrives? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
For the Love of the Photograph,
David
