Tuesdays with Nate | Lessons Learned (Part 1)

Rebecca and I have been doing this thing together for about 2 years now. I’m still not an expert, by any means, but I have learned a lot. We recently started answering questions on formspring (keep em coming people!) and we’ve gotten a lot of questions about how we do what we do, a lot of questions about the “right” and “wrong” way to get certain shots and which equipment to use. Granted, I don’t know everything, but I know what works for us, so let me crack some eggs of wisdom on ya, take it or leave it…

You don’t have to get every shot everywhere – When I walk into a venue or a location we’ve chosen to shoot at, I get easily overwhemled. “I have to get a wide shot there. This place has a cool pattern. That wall is colorful.” and on and on. What I’ve learned is that I don’t have to shoot there for four hours just to get every shot. My favorite shots are always the ones that really capture the people, their feelings, and their natural expressions. We spent 2 hours shooting our friend Rachel in front of the downtown skyline, on roofs, in front of sunsets, and one of our favorite pictures ended up being the one we took on the fly in front of a blue dumpster. Besides, if you use up all the good stuff on the first shoot, you can’t come back there later.

Learn to use what you have – One of the topics that we got asked a lot about was about our gear. We have what we consider to be a fairly nice selection of lenses, camera bodies, and lighting (but there’s always room for more toys right?), but that wasn’t always the case. Our first wedding, as we’ve mentioned before, was shot on a Rebel XTI and a 20D that I got the day before from a guy who thought it was broken. Our collection grew slowly over the last two years. The guys at the camera store would watch us come in and out, buying little bits of mediocre gear as we could afford it. When we recently bought our newest camera bodies and lenses they joked with us about us finally buying the big guns. We didn’t take out a big loan, we didn’t spend every bit of money we had on gear, and we still have a lot of things we would like to upgrade (I’m not sure we ever won’t have that feeling). It is possible to take excellent pictures and get great results with less than top-of-the-line gear. That being said, you will appreciate your upgrades more after learning to get the most out of what you have.

Do what you like, how you like it – A lot of the questions were also centered around techniques for lighting, composition, and posing. Our responses were often along the lines of “we do it like this _____ but that may or may not be the ‘right’ way to do it for you”. We know what works for us. A lot of people will tell you that you have to shoot portraits with a lens around 70mm, a lot of ours are done with wide angles, the 50mm, and one of my favorites for portraits is a 100mm. If it looks good to you, do it. That is not meant to downplay the long-standing and time-honored techniques and principles of photography, not even a little bit. Study, learn, experiment, but in the end if you find something that works for you, stick with it and innovate.

In the spirit of random question asking, I’ll let you decide what next weeks’ “TWN” topic will be:

A) Comparison video/photos of the 5DmkII and 7D
B) Pet Peeves and never before revealed quirks about Becka
C) 27 facts about me on the 27th birthday on the 27th of January
D) A surprise Interview with someone of my choosing (I will choose someone awesome)