Want to say a word about taking thousands of photographs, as there appears to be a current of thinly veiled to naked scorn at the very idea of it. I feel this is unjustified and a peculiar failure of imagination at the different situations photography covers.
On normal days, I'm not inclined to shoot piles of exposures regardless of what camera I have, but there is one situation in my life which demands it.
My teenage niece plays soccer.
Now some might immediately respond that a good sports photographer wouldn't need to machine gun the soccer pitch to get a couple keepers. Hang on, the situation isn't that simple.
I agree with you. Furthermore, one is faced with what appears to be an important decision to make if one is not graced with the ability to always get the shot where the eyes are all open, no one is fidgeting, everyone's clothing not in disarray, no grimaces, etc, one either has to machine-gun or one has to accept that a number of excellent shots will be missed.
Machine-gunning is no guarantee that the great shots will be hit, but it represents a chance that they will. Simply accepting that one is not quite capable of always nailing the perfect shot in an action sequence is, to me, anathema.
Perhaps it is more pure. Perhaps it is more artistic. Perhaps it is truer of spirit - to simply issue that oh-so-gallic shrug and say "
Oh well, I guess I am not good enough to do it on my own, and I refuse to resort to artificial assistance."
I have found '
run-n-gun' to be extremely useful to me in a number of circumstances. Very often I pick a shot out the middle of ten consecutive frames and I find I like it very much. Can I congratulate myself, since I did not take that
EXACT shot, but instead merely triggered the sequence that captured it? I suppose not. But the goal was to get a good shot and here I have done that - and this is wrong how?
I see it very much as a tool to be used in appropriate circumstances, just like auto-focus, auto-exposure, various programs, post-processing, and so one. I don't always do it, but I have no problem doing it. Why not? I have room on my digital memory cards, I have battery power. Whom am I harming?
And yet, as you said, the disdain bordering on fanaticism from some. Well, whatever. I really don't care if they disapprove, with their effete noses tilted daintily in the air. In fact, I find it a tad amusing. Not that I mind sticking a thumb in their eyes from time to time. They'd miss the shot and feel noble about it because they did not '
cheat' to get it. I'd get the shot and feel great about the shot, because the shot is what matters.
Tell me about the gallery where the only photos hanging on the walls were shots that were
not taken because the photographer refused to compromise his noble anti-machinegun sensibility!
What matters is results. Take lots of photos. One gets better by practicing. Even if the photos themselves don't improve instantly, one's mind-machine interface does - the camera becomes an extension of one's self.
