So I had a bit of a disasterous weekend, but something constructive very much did come out of it: it made be think about my approach to photography — and hopefully, by accepting a few hard truths, I may even improve because of it.
Here’s the thing: for years, now, I’ve been using the zone-focusing method in my street photography. It’s served me very well, but by insisting on using it all of the time I’ve been been limiting myself creatively.
You see, it works very well on a bright sunny day when my subject is framed by a nice non-distracting background… but… this is the UK (sunny days aren’t exactly common place) and this is street photography (and streets are full of anything but constant distractions).
And here’s another hard truth that was difficult to swallow: I’ve somehow managed to convince myself that I NEED a high ISO when the light is anything short of a full on supernova and I NEED that fast shutter speed and I NEED that f8 apature… or otherwise, no matter what, my subject will be an out-of-fuocus and blury mess.
The hardest truth of all to accept? It’s realising exactly why I think those things. It isn’t because of the gawd-knows how many excuses I’ve told myself, but it’s because I’m just compensating for poor excecution; from slipping into bad habbits and being sloppy and lazy — slow down… the reason you’re not getting that focus right is because of YOU… stop… think about what you’re doing properly… breath… NOW take the shot…
So I’ve decided to abandon my zone focusing on those ocasions where a different approach is needed and go with auto focus for a while. I kept trying to tell meyself that zoning suited my style better no matter what the occasion — what it REALLY did, though, was it allowed me to get decent results from my sloppy approach — I even caught myself taking planned portrait shots this way, which is absolute madness, so I’ve decided to work on this pronto before my fellow camera buddies stage an intervention.
Don’t get me wrong — I’ll still be using zone focus a lot when it’s the right time and place; I just won’t be using it in the wrong time and place purely to cover my bad habbits.
And this got me thinking: have you tried something new lately, or thinking of doing so? I remember someone very smart once saying ‘the definition of stupidity is repeating the same process over and over again and expecting a different result,’ or something like that.