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Community Corner

With Photos, it's Practice, Practice, Practice

It's the only way to get to Carnegie Hall, and the only way to get great photos, every time.

In the last article, we talked about “fooling” the light meter. If you are like most people, you may still end up disappointed. You read the words and think, “I just may try that next time", but then forget all about it. 

Imagine you are giving your 6-year-old daughter a birthday party, and while you are watching her eat her cake, one of her friends bumps her arm. Now she has cake and frosting on her face. With mere seconds before the scene evaporates, you shoot, only to find that the window behind her fooled the meter, and you ended up with less of a shot than you wanted. 

If you had practiced you would have been ready. 

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Do not wait for the situation to arise.  Go out and intentionally shoot a scene with the sun in it (avoid looking directly into the sun), three to four hours before sunset, and shoot it both ways, fooling the meter and not. 

Or with the sun at your back, look for a bright reflection and shoot that both ways.  The point here is to practice, so that when the situation does arise, you will instinctively know how to handle it, because you have “been there, and done that”. 

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If, on the other hand, you are that one in 10,000 people who can instantaneously grasp and retain information, I offer the same advice: practice, practice, and then practice. I have yet to meet an accomplished professional who didn’t practice.

In the days of shooting film there was the cost of the film, developing, and printing just to find out if you had a bad shot or not. In the digital world what do you have to lose, but a little battery power? 

In closing, I will relate a story of an accomplished cello player new to the New York scene. With cello strapped to his back, he walks up to a hippie on a street corner and asks, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?".

The hippie responds, “Practice, man. Practice."

snapshot

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