I’ve always been a fan of the Beetles every since they walked off that plane landing in the good old USA in 1964. That was sixty-four years ago, so I’m not sure how many of you out there saw it happening in real time like I did!!!
Let me digress,
I’ve been writing a blog since 2011 and a post has come out every six days since then!!
Getting my ideas for these posts come in all flavors: in my sleep when I wake up and write the idea down, watching a movie or TV show, eating my meals when I envision them while swirling around my Campbell’s Chicken Noodle soup, or spelling them in my alphabet cereal, or while listening to music in my car. This particular posts came to me while listening to Paul McCartney sing, “Let it Be“.
I teach an online classes with the BPSOP, and I also conduct my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops all over the (perfectly round) planet.
When walking around with one of the photographers during one of my workshops I’m always noticing that they will tend to raise their camera off their chest or hung over their shoulder, bring it up to their eye, and in one innocuous movement click the shutter…and as a result, over-process the hell out of it later while sitting in front of a computer.
I will tell them to not worry about the first shot being the one, you know the one that will go on the wall, a.k.a., wall hanger. I’m not saying that the first one couldn’t be ‘the one’, what I’m saying is that Vegas wouldn’t take those odds. That said, there is one exception, and that is if you’re street shooting and you have that one in a hundred, or thousand, or million chance of getting it, but that’s better than no chance; as in the submitted photo above.
Case in point, I was walking down one of the narrow streets in Shanghai, China and out of my left eye, my right eye in the viewfinder looking straight ahead, I saw this scary somewhat sinister looking man, his gaze fixed on what I was doing, the thought quickly racing through my mind that I could disappear without a trace in a country of over one a half billion people.
I had a 17-20mm lens on and was aiming the camera down the street panning the crowd for a shot, so he didn’t realize that he was my subject. In the proverbial blink of an eye I took the shot, and in the next blink of the (same) eye he had moved out of the light lost in a sea of Chinese.
Except for that, my chances of one of those ‘OMG’ shots lies somewhere in the second, third, fourth, or even fifth adjustment or variation.
So, my fellow photographers, what happens is that you take that first go at it (British talk) and then kill it with over-processing to make it appear as if you had spend time on it. In my respectful opinion it never works. I have seen photos that look like they just came out of a Disney Movie…and then there’s always AI to really f**ck it up.
Take your time, smell the roses and as Bob Marley once said, “Some people feel the rain while others just get wet.”
Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on Instagram: www.instagram.com/barabanjoe. Check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog, or follow me on FB. Come shoot with me sometime.
