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The First Shot

I always seem to find that I never use the first image taken on a particular exercise or session. Why? I don't know really. It is almost as if I need to "warm up" and the first or even second clicks are just that. I guess in these days of digital storage it does not really matter and doesn't cost you anything (apart from a very slight degradation of that part of your storage card). In the case of wet film shooting, that's a frame or 2 gone never to be recovered. So does shooting digital make you lazy and less disciplined in what you capture? I don't think so. I think the freedom digital gives allows you to try more ideas. You are also not so limited in the number of images you take of a particular subject. Trying to get the picture you want of a bird or butterfly for example just right could result in 10 or more images, of which only 1 may avoid the "delete" button.

However, back to my opening point. Why not stop and assess more fully before raising the camera to eye? That way the first shot has a better chance of delivering what you want. Well there are many photographers (particularly landscape) who treat a photo shoot like a game of chess; that is not my way and I'll talk about that next time.
23/09/2012