Week of 3/6-3/13

I really can't emphasize enough how lucky I was when I got this shot. I passed the alley as the man turned on to it and by the time I got my camera up to my eye, I produced this exposure. When I went to make adjustments to the shutter and aperture and re-compose the shot, his shadow was in the wrong place and he was too far from me. It really pays to have the camera out (with the lens cap off) and ready to take pictures. Scott Kelby calls it the "never ready" cap since you're never ready to take pictures for the 1 second you take to remove it and put the camera to your eye.

Before this project, I would have been walking around with my camera in its bag and would have totally missed this shot. Another photographer (the name escapes me) advocated readiness and said he walks around with his camera everywhere because he never knows what he's going to shoot. I can definitely speak to that as I almost never end up using what I thought I wanted a picture of for a given day. This also allowed him to get some of his 'work' done while going about his normal day-to-day activities without having to set time up for going out and taking pictures. Indeed, the times I've gone out to hunt for pictures have often been the least rewarding. Alternatively, if I go out and look for "that thing I saw yesterday that would make a nice easy shot for today" it almost never grabs me in the same way. OR I end up finding something much cooler on my way to or from my initial "target."