Photography lessons relearned

Yesterday I participated in a photo session dedicated to dealing with grief and while I took a lot of equipment I foolishly didn’t use what I should have to ensure quality photographs. I had intended to do some double exposures and multiple exposures to combine in Photoshop to resemble ghostly apparitions so I brought a tripod. What I forgot, was the tripod collar for my heavy 70-200 f/2.8 lens, so mounting the camera with that lens to the tripod was out of the question. Even at that, I didn’t mount the camera to the tripod even when I used another lens. Needless to say, this rendered most of those images unusable. The couple I was able to save required a significant amount of post-processing work.

Lessons learned:

1. Slow down. I’ve talked about this concept in the past but I still fail to do this frequently. Why? I haven’t a clue. I get distracted and start to hurry along even when there isn’t a need. Often it may be that I feel like I’m in competition with others at the photo session (there were three of us as photographers with one model).
2. Use your gear. I have a decent amount of equipment. Things like neutral density filters, tripods, light meters, gray cards, remote triggers, speedlights, etc. I bring these things but rarely use them in recent times.
3. Think! Along with all the equipment I have I’ve been trained through an actual school in addition to the school of “hard knocks” and yet I still make mistakes.

All that being said, the outing wasn’t a failure. I was able to get multiple photographs that were quite usable. The outing also served as an important reminder to use my knowledge and gear more effectively. I reminded myself to slow down and plan the shots. Sometimes we have to re-learn the basics. Yesterday was a day to remind me of the basics.