In my other classes, I have used the phrases “safety shot” and “sketch images”. I don’t remember where I originally heard the term “safety shot”, but “sketch images” is a phrase I’ve unapologetically adopted from David duChemin. (More from him later.)
Safety Shots
Safety shots are the obvious photos. They are the photos you take when you’re afraid your subject will leave quickly or when you don’t know what else to do. They aren’t usually the most creative option, but they are a solid starting point. Your safety shot insures you aren’t going home empty-handed.
Taking a safety shot is one way to take the edge off of the intense drive to “TAKE A PICTURE, TAKE A PICTURE, TAKE A PICTURE!” Get your safety shot, then use that as a jumping off point for other possibilities. Look at what you have and then start asking questions.
- What if I changed my perspective?
- How would this look from a different angle — lower, higher?
- What if I framed it tighter? Looser?
- How would it look in a vertical rather than horizontal orientation?
- Is there a time of day or year that would be better to photograph this subject?
- Is there a lens or focal length that would capture the subject better?
These aren’t the only questions, but it’s a start. Obviously you may not have the opportunity to implement all of the options, but by asking a few of them, hopefully you can move from your starting point and start to sketchother images.
Sketch Images
Art is an iterative process.
When a painter is starting a new work, they will often begin with multiple sketches of the thing they want to paint. They work out many of the details before putting brush to canvas.
Authors also work with sketches, but they call them rough drafts. No author publishes their first version of a book. The book goes through multiple drafts and is edited by someone other than the author before it hits the shelves.
Inexperienced photographers are often under the impression that the pros are able to make a perfect photo every time. Nothing could be further from the truth. Behind every breathtaking image is a series of missteps, false starts, blurry images, and plain old crap. But every one of those bad photos taught the photographer something and is an essential part of making the final image as amazing as possible.
That series of images that come before the final one are the sketch images. A safety shot is your first sketch image.
The emphasis in this class is not going to be on polished images, at least not to start. I don’t want to see the photo you think is your best. I want to see your process. Show me your sketch images and your safety shots.
How I use Safety Shots and Sketch Images in my Photography
My three main photography loves are dog agility, bird photography, and landscapes involving water. Let me briefly describe my sketching process for each of those different types of photography.
Dog Agility
When you are photographing dog competitions, you only get one chance at each dog. There is no way to ask the judge to let the competitor do their run over again so you can improve on your shots. In these circumstances, each dog becomes the sketch image for the next dog in the ring.
I always feel bad for the first 3-5 dogs on the course at a national agility event. I always know what obstacles I want to photograph, but until I’ve seen a few dogs run the course, I’m never 100% sure how the shots are going to work. Or if they’ll work at all! I miss more of the shots for the first 3-5 dogs than I do for the rest of the competitors because I’m working out the logistics and details for each shot that I’ve lined up. By the end of the day, my shots are almost automatic.
It used to take me a lot longer to get the flow of a course, but my years (er, decades?) of experience allow me to settle in much faster than I used to. Usually. I still get flummoxed by some courses and feel like I’m fighting for the shot with every. single. dog. But even on those courses, I’m able to take what I learn from one dog and apply it to the next.
Bird Photography
Birds are another subject that aren’t usually willing to let you take your time and sketch to your heart’s content. They move unexpectedly and fly away on their timeline, not yours.
I take a similar approach to sketching birds that I do with dogs. Every bird I photograph is a sketch for the next one. My photos of Great Gray Owls have consistently improved over the years because I know how to anticipate their behaviors better.
Here’s a specific example. I held a bird photography workshop in Arizona last fall (Oct 2018). Several of the days were spent at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum photographing their Raptor Free Flight. The first day I got there, my photos were terrible. I had been there two years prior, so I knew a little bit of what to expect, but I still didn’t get anything I was truly proud of. I didn’t know where the birds were going to go, I didn’t know what species would be flying, I didn’t have a good sense of where the light would be, etc. etc. I couldn’t decide if I wanted perched shots or flight shots, so both were mediocre. It was a mess.
I returned to the museum five more times over the next week. The first three days I was on my own, scouting for my workshop. The other three days were part of the workshop. Every time I returned, I had a plan for what I was going to do differently.
Day 2: concentrate on the flight patterns of the birds and watch how they land and take off
Day 3: pick a spot for flight shots, not perched. Pay attention to the light and the wind. Shoot at a shorter focal length so that wings aren’t clipped. Use a full frame camera instead of crop factor camera.
Day 4: Use a shorter lens. Continue to focus on flight shots.
Day 5: Stick with full frame camera and shorter lens. Improve on flight shots from previous day.
Day 6: Same gear as Day 5 and further refining of flight shots.
By Day 6, I was feeling really confident in my choices of gear and shooting positions. I was able to anticipate where the birds would go. I could read their body language better and knew when they would launch for the next perch. I got multiple keeper shots, including these two below.
Landscapes
Landscape photography is the one area where sketch images are the most intuitive. I can visit a place over and over again and try different perspectives each time. I also have the time to try multiple sketch images in one visit. I do have to remind myself to *move* once I’ve taken several images from the same place.
The link below is to a series of images of Gooseberry Falls was taken in one session last summer. They are all images that I chose to process, but they all have 4-6 other similar sketch images to go with them. If I had the chance to return that week, I would have tried a few other angles and positions, based on what I saw in my photos from that night.
