On imperfect conditions

“It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster’s shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making seminars with other oysters.”

– Stephen King, “On Writing.”

I wrote in this earlier post on waterproof gear that bad weather often makes good photos. In fact, incorporating weather (read:bad weather, form a conventional viewpoint) in a photo is almost a requirement in some genres of modern photography. Indeed, Ansel Adams is arguably the most famous photographer ever mostly because he was ahead of his time by using weather elements in his landscapes. Nowadays, every landscape photographer does it.

However, it is not just imperfect weather conditions that promote creativity. Other challenges are also very effective in developing a photographer’s skill. For example, shooting in low light is challenging, but the results are usually worth the effort.

Likewise, shooting sports action is difficult because of the fast, unpredictable movement of the athletes, lack of control over light, etc. For a while, I was using a Canon EOS 5D Mark II as my main camera and felt that the low framing rate and slow autofocus were really limiting the success rate of my shots. After upgrading to the unbelievably fast Canon EOS-1D X , I can definitely say that my experience with the 5d Mark II was very valuable, as it taught me to determine the characteristic moments of the action, whether it is basketball, soccer, rugby or swimming. If I didn’t have the sense of those decisive, characteristic moments for each sport, it would have been tempting to just let the 1Dx rip at 12 frames per second from the beginning of each play until the end. This would have left me with tens of thousands of poor images, among which it would have been impossible to find a single good one, that would tell the story of the game.

So in order to improve at photography, I try to:

• Shoot challenging subjects;
• Shoot in difficult light and poor weather;
• Practice with whatever gear we have to find out the limits of a particular piece of equipment – it makes the new gear, when it becomes available, much more effective.