In this blog I will share with you 5 ways in which you can stop missing photo opportunities and even set yourself up for success the next time you head out. Let me ask you a question. Do you ever feel like you’re always one step behind? Or do you ever see a great subject but by the time you got round to taking a photo, it’s too late? Even if you did manage to get the photo, do you feel like you have totally messed it up? We’ve all been there but there are things we can do to mitigate this and the first one is just to be prepared.

Be Prepared
I promise I’m not teaching you how to suck eggs but we have all gone out to shoot woefully under-prepared. The following things I have done multiple times:

Ive gone out with the battery at 15% and no spare
Ive gone out without a memory card
Ive gone out without a wrist strap and always felt like I will drop the camera
Ive had the camera in video mode or HDR mode or something random… so when I saw an opportunity I was in no position to get a photo
Ive left the lens cap on
I didn’t bother getting my camera out because there is nothing interesting here…. Only to kick myself later

So you might sit there and laugh because you haven’t done any of these… I did too…. Until I went out without a charged battery and felt like a total knob. Moral of the story… be prepared…

Set Up For Success
Whether you shoot manual or aperture priority, it is important to have your camera set up for the current environment. For example you were shooting outside in the sun and then decided to go indoors. However your camera was still set up for a brightly lit scene. A minute later you see a great subject, so you grab your camera, switch it on and then either end up with a blurry mess or 3 stops under exposed. By thinking ahead a little you could have easily avoided this. So next time, as you experience a drastic change of lighting conditions, make sure your camera is set up correctly as soon as those conditions change. Don’t leave it for when it’s too late.

Look & Plan Ahead
When someone asks me why do I specifically like street photography and my answer is always the same. Street photography teaches you to look, to observe and to pay attention to the world around you. So many times I can recall seeing an interesting subject in the distance and then seeing the direction in which they are walking. Or maybe it’s a cool classic car driving down the road and rather than just taking photos right away, taking a moment to look around and see what’s around you. Maybe if you quickly cross the road, and shoot from a different angle, you will get a much cleaner background. Or maybe the best shot is from behind once the subject has walked past. The more you look around, the better you will get at predicting what might happen. You will learn peoples behaviour patterns and body positioning. That way you can make a better educated guess whether that person will walk through your current frame or whether you will need to move. As you develop this skill, the amount of missed opportunities will start to reduce.

Be patient
Now I will have to confess this more of a reminder for me than for anyone else. But working on your patience both in the short term and the long term will make a huge difference to your overall success. From a short term perspective, when you get to a cool location but you can’t seem to see any photos or maybe you’re waiting for the right subject to walk past or even for the cloud to break, just give it a bit more time. Of course don’t spend a whole day in one spot, unless you want to, but just give it a few more minutes. In many cases, you will be glad you did. Also look at this from a longer term perspective, maybe there is a part of town where you really want to get a good shot but you always end up empty handed. Don’t give up on it just yet, whenever you walk past just pop in quickly and see if anything happens. Photography is a life long marathon and not a sprint. So slow down and be more patient. Both in the short and long term. It will only lead to more photos that you love.

Journal
Finally it doesn’t matter how prepared to patient you are but sometimes luck is just not on your side. If that’s the case, there is still something you can do and that is to journal and save for the future. I don’t mean in a cheesy self development kind of way. I mean to create a visual journal of the location. The best tool for that is your phone. By taking a quick photo or even video of the location and the light, you now have a visual note, the time of day, time of year and GPS coordinates. Then have a folder on your laptop or phone with all of these locations from each city you visit. So maybe on this visit to London you didn’t get anything here, but next time you visit, you will have your own mini encyclopaedia of photo spots that you can go back to and try again.

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Stop F**king Up Your Photos