OK so quick personal anecdote about something which happened to me this morning. I was catching an earlier train in to set up for a shoot. I had, as always, my camera with me, in case a situation called for it. The train randomly came to a standstill and out the window, surrounded by mist, was a fox. Picture it if you will: a beautiful fox, on the train tracks, morning light, mist, and it even turned to look in at the window. Amazing. The perfect photo, the 500px extraordinaire, the flickr extravaganza, was stood posing for me on the tracks, in an environment which couldn’t be set up better in a studio.
I knew that time was running out- the train would soon move off, or the fox may look away any second. So I grabbed my camera, pressed the button and ‘click’!
The picture is below.
What? Oh no! I realise in a moment of panic and certainty I’m about to lose the moment- all my settings were set up for some long exposure light painting with use of flash, from the previous evening! The shutter speed was on about 8 seconds. Quickly, set it to 1/50! -That should be about right. Oh crud! Same again! Why is it so underexposed?!? The aperture is set to f11!
To cut a long story short, the train moved off, and I felt bitter and angry at myself. I even tried to quickly switch to fully automatic as a last ditch attempt, but the flash popped up and there were a few people sleeping, and it would have reflected off the window. The train moved on, and I was left feeling even more angry than before.
As proof of the fox’s proximity here’s a ‘recovered’ shot I took as the train moved away, still on the wrong settings:
So my point is this- make sure you have your camera set to the rough settings for the environment you’re about to walk into. Even if you dont think you’ll have a need to take photos, its WELL WORTH making sure the settings are at least about right. Imagine if you turned a corner to find Brad Pitt having a foam fight with Jessica Alba. And you tried to take a picture, only to find you just took a mass of white blur. You’d be gutted wouldnt you.
Anyway, lesson learnt, I guess Ill just have to get up at a ridiculous time again on the hope I run into similar circumstances, but something tells me I wont.
