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184 - Is Burst Mode Ruining Your Photography? · The Nerdy Photographer Podcast

• 0:02
  Casey Fatchett: Hey there! Welcome back to the Nerdy
• 0:03
  Photographer. Today's episode is about doing less. Specifically,
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  it's about what happens to your photography when you
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  deliberately slow down the act of making an image, and why that
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  constraint, which feels sometimes like a step backward,
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  almost always produces a step forward in quality and
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  intentionality for your work. We live in an era of high-speed
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  burst. Modern mirrorless cameras can shoot 20, 3040, frames per
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  second. Computational photography on smartphones can
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  take dozens of exposures simultaneously and merge them
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  instantly. The technology has made it essentially free, in any
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  practical sense, to take a very large number of photos of any
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  given moment, and that abundance is quietly doing damage to how
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  we see things. So, what's the cost of abundance? Well, here's
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  a dynamic worth examining honestly. When you know you can
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  fire 30 frames per second, the calculus of an individual frame
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  changes, the cost of a missed shot drops to nearly zero
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  because surely one of the 30 frames will be right. And when
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  individual frames cost nothing, the incentive to study each one
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  before taking it evaporates. This isn't laziness; it's a
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  completely rational response to available technology. But the
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  consequence is a shift from a proactive creative mode, where
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  you're composing, waiting, and deciding, to a reactive one,
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  where you're capturing a broad slice of time and selecting from
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  it afterwards. The creative decision moves from the moment
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  of shooting to the moment of culling, and something important
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  gets lost in that transfer. I really want to be fair here.
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  High frame rates have legitimate uses. Sports photography
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  tracking an athlete through a peak moment while the
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  photographer is waiting for a bird to spread its wings. In
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  contexts such as this, burst shooting is the right tool. The
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  problem isn't the technology. It's applying a reactive, high
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  volume approach to situations that would reward a slower, more
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  deliberate one. In 1952, Henri Cartier-Bresson published a book
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  with an English title that has become one of the most cited
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  concepts in the history of photography. It's called *The
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  Decisive Moment* His argument was that photography's unique
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  power lay in its ability to capture a single instant, in
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  which form, content, and meaning converged, where the geometry of
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  the frame, the expression of the subject, and the energy of the
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  scene aligned simultaneously, briefly, and then dissolved.
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  Cartier-Bresson wasn't describing luck; he was
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  describing a practice of sustained, patient attention, of
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  watching a scene develop, anticipating where it's going
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  and positioning himself to be ready when the elements
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  converged, he was proactive about the moment rather than
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  reactive to it. That practice is only possible when you're fully
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  present and looking, rather than shooting continuously and
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  hoping. The spray and pray method. You cannot wait for the
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  decisive moment if you've already taken 200 frames of the
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  scene and your attention is drifting towards the next
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  location. So let's talk about the attention shift. When I said
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  earlier that slowing down changes how your brain operates,
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  I want to be specific about what I mean, because changes in your
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  brain chemistry is vague to the point of being meaningless. What
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  actually happens is an attentional shift. Cognitive
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  psychology distinguishes between two broad modes of attention:
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  stimulus-driven attention, which is reactive. Your attention is
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  pulled toward whatever is most salient in your environment, and
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  goal-directed attention, which is deliberate. You decide what
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  to focus on and actively maintain that focus. High-volume
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  shooting tends to operate in a stimulus-driven mode. Something
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  happens, you respond. Slow photography requires
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  goal-directed attention. You decide what you're looking for.
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  You hold that intention, and you observe the scene through that
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  lens. Figuratively, it requires more cognitive effort, which is
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  why it feels harder, but it's also why the results tend to be
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  more considered and more distinctive. You're making
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  active decisions rather than selecting from reactions. The
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  natural destination of the slow photography mindset is a
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  practice that Ansel Adams formalized and wrote about
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  extensively. Pre-visualization. Pre-visualization is the ability
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  to look at a scene and form a complete mental image of the
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  final photograph before the shutter is pressed to see in
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  your mind not just what's in front of you but what the scene
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  will look like rendered through your specific choice of
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  exposure, framing, depth of field, and timing.
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  Adams developed this concept in the context of large-format film
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  photography, where the cost and physical effort of each exposure
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  made deliberation essential, but it translates directly to any
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  photographic practice. The question, "What do I want this
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  image to look like? asked before you shoot rather than after,
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  forces a different quality of engagement with your scene. In
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  practice, previsualization might. As simple as pausing
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  before raising the camera and asking, "What is this photograph
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  actually about? What is the single most important element in
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  this frame? Where do I want the viewer's eye to go to? Is the
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  light doing what I needed to do right now, or should I wait?
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  That five-second pause, consistently applied, changes
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  the nature of the images that result. Now, I use
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  pre-visualization in two different ways. I use it in the
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  way that's just discussed, like right before I take an image,
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  I'm lifting the camera to my eye, or I've already got it up
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  there, and I'm looking at it, going, "What do I want this to
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  say? Where's the subject, and where I want the viewer's eye to
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  go? That's happening. But I also use pre-visualization the day
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  before a shoot. I like to get into my head and be like, okay,
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  this is what I want these photos to look like. This is what I'm
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  hoping for. This how this is going to turn out because I'm
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  getting my mind ready for that moment, for those moments when
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  they happen the next day when I'm doing the shoot. And I
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  always bring up this. It's the film mindset, a useful way to
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  access this slower mode, even with a digital camera, is to
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  temporarily impose the constraints of working with
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  film. In the film era, the cost of each frame was real and
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  immediate. A roll of 36 exposures had to be developed,
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  and every frame on it was going to cost roughly the same amount,
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  regardless of whether it was a keeper or you were throwing it
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  away, that economic reality changed behavior. Photographers
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  looked longer before shooting. They waited for the moment to
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  develop. They checked their corners for distracting
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  elements. They thought about whether the image was worth the
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  frame. You can simulate this psychologically by imposing
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  artificial limits. Decide before you go out that you will take 24
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  photographs or 36 and no more. You cannot delete any in the
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  field. You cannot review them on the screen after each shot. I
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  have it photographers call chimping and one that pulls your
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  attention backward into what you just shot rather than forward
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  into what's developing in front of you. Those constraints change
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  the texture of a shoot entirely; each frame becomes a considered
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  decision rather than a hedged bet. The bravest thing you can
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  do with a modern camera capable of 30 frames per second is take
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  one photograph, not because volume is wrong, but because the
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  discipline of making one image count forces a quality of
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  attention that volume shooting rarely demands. Here's your
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  homework for this episode. It's the film simulation. Take a
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  small memory card or simply commit to a number. Limit
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  yourself to 24, 36 frames, or 12 even for an entire outing. No
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  infield deletions, no chimping. Before you raise the camera for
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  each shot, pause for a few seconds and ask what the
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  photograph is actually about. When you return and review the
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  work, notice not just which images succeeded, but how you
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  found them, how much more deliberately you moved, waited,
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  and looked compared to your usual approach. That
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  deliberateness is the practice. The images are almost secondary.
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  I hope you enjoyed this, and until next time, stay safe and
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  stay nerdy.