I’m always checking my four corners, even when I’m out street shooting.
I want to announce my next workshop “Autumn in France” to be next October 2nd. It will be in Bordeaux, Dordogne, and Toulouse. If you go to the top of my blog and click on the link, you can read the description. Join me for a great visual experience, seeing places that few people won’t ever be able to.
I’ve been shooting professionally for almost fifty-five years, and to this day I still go through my three checklist exercises to make sure what I want in my composition is there, and what I don’t want in my composition isn’t. These three practices are what I teach and preach to all my fellow photographers that either take my online classes with the BPSOP or attend one of my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet.
I have written posts on two of them that hopefully, you might have read: My Fifteen Point Protection Plan, and my Border Patrol. My third exercise is called my Four Corner Checkoff, and it’s very simple to use, and worth a couple of seconds it takes to complete….that is if you remember.
Right before I pull the trigger ( that’s Texas talk for clicking the shutter), I glance at all the four corners to make sure all is as expected. Among other things, I’ll look to see if there’s any vignetting from a poorly attached lens shade, or the wrong lens shade on the right lens. Until I bought an ultra-thin Polarizing filter, I would occasionally get dark areas in the corners from combining a lens shade and a filter.
Then, there’s just the common variety of mistakes like including tree branches, parts of un-wanted buildings, fingers and hands being cut off, etc.
I realize that all three of these exercises are tantamount to redundancy, but as far as I’m concerned, being redundant is a good thing; it’s saved me on many an occasion.
Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on instagram. check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.
JoeB
