Sometimes it is not about knowing how to take a decent photograph, but about having your camera ready at the right time and pressing that button just when you do. Sure, some planning will increase your chance of actually getting the shot, but it will always be just that, a chance.
Chance is something many people don’t get about the kind of photos I take. By no means do I qualify myself as a great photographer, but I do have some shots that show I am competent. That competence is something many other people have though and when they don’t, they can usually get it.
The tree photos in this post are from a sports day we had at school a few weeks back. I managed to take 1100 odd photos. I was able to discard 500 right off the bat and managed to get that down to about 160 that I thought was worth cropping, editing and sharing with the people at school.
Of those 160, there are maybe five that I really like and maybe five more that I think are a bit better than the rest. That is 10 photos out of 1000. 1000 photos where I got in to position and I pressed the button, hoping to get what I needed or wanted. I did not take my camera, point it at something just willy nilly and then expect every one of my 50 total photos to be usable.
Ansel Adams, one of the most recognised names in photography said:
“Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.”
You can add to that what Henri Cartier-Bresson said:
“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”
This first photo was taken at the rope jumping competition. They had three or four rounds, I don’t remember. These two were the last remaining students in their grade. I got myself a position so that I had both of them in the frame and waited for one to make a mistake. Every now and then I would press the button just in case it looked nice, and then it happened. The one boy made a mistake. He did not immediately realize what had happened, but as soon as I saw the mistake I had my finger on the shutter release and burst mode was firing. This was the exact moment where he realised that after all his hard work he was not the winner.
For the next two photos I got myself in position to look down the final straight. I was day-dreaming and didn’t get the moment it started, but I reacted quickly enough to get some of the complete scene.
The boy in white was on the final straight, way ahead of the rest. Finishing off the win for his team was just a formality. Something happened and he stumbled, falling with everyone looking. The student avoiding him did not seem to fully grasp what was happening until the second photo, when he was breaking the finishing line.
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