Planning for that Decisive Moment in Photography

Photography Tips

You can never be successful in any field if you leave everything up to luck. Similarly, if you want to succeed in photography, you need to be sure of what you’re doing. Every action that you take needs to make sense. And most of the outcomes, if not all, need to be predictable. Luck can only have a tiny window to influence your work. For this to happen, you need to have things under your control. And you can do so by planning ahead. Photographer Mark Wallace from Adorama talks about three important things that you need to line up for that decisive moment:

“Decisive moment takes a little bit of planning and some luck.”

When you’re planning for your shoot, be sure to consider the time of day, and the composition beforehand. The time of day determines how your surroundings will look, and how the light, shadows, and colors will appear in the image. With composition, you get to decide what all you want to include or exclude in the frame, and what story you want to tell. It is the “action” part that’s influenced by luck. You might have to wait sometime with some luck on your side for something interesting to happen.

As Wallace shares in the video, he had to wait for the right time of day to take the photo to get the perfect lighting. He also had to experiment with a couple of different compositions until he got the one that felt just right. And as for the action part, it was his patience that really paid off. This allowed him to take a really beautiful image of the sunset by the lake with a boat moving across.

Once you’re out and about, and taking pictures again, be sure to practice these tips from Wallace. You’ll see how planning and patience will really help you take beautiful photos of those decisive moments.