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Took my Pentax K1000 to the farmer's market last Sunday and something clicked
I was at the Union Square Greenmarket in Manhattan around 9 AM, trying to get a shot of those huge bushels of apples. A lady selling honey told me to stop worrying about perfect focus and just shoot from the hip more... so I aimed low and caught a kid petting a sheepdog. That one frame came out better than the 20 I'd carefully lined up before. Has anyone else had a stranger's advice totally change how you shoot on the fly?
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seanperry27d ago
Hold up, I gotta push back a little here. I've been shooting film for almost fifteen years and random advice from strangers at markets has cost me way more rolls than it has helped. In my experience, that lady's "just shoot from the hip" thing works great if you're after a lucky snapshot, but it falls apart when you actually want consistent results. I wasted a whole summer trying to be more spontaneous and ended up with a bunch of blurry, poorly composed frames that I could never fix in the darkroom. The careful shots you lined up before that one lucky frame were probably better on average, and you traded twenty decent photos for one happy accident. Your mileage may vary, but I'd rather trust my own deliberate eye than some honey vendor's philosophy.
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