R&G in NYC

By MICHAEL PERKINS

LIFE, IN GENERAL, HAPPENS QUICKLY, a condition that photographers, out of necessity, learn to live with. We decide in mere instants what gets stored into our little boxes, evaluating the “lose/keep” equation with whatever scant time we’re given. Some places, admittedly, afford us decent stretches of contemplation, allowing us to sculpt and shape an image at our leisure. You know; the “park my tripod and wait hours for the ducks” type of picture.

And then there’s shooting in New York.

Shooting on semi-automatic mode, perfect for nailing the basics when speeding through busy Manhattan.

Manhattan may not be the place were impatience was born, but it certainly is the town where it is most practiced. On my recent “reunion” with the city (after five years away), I found myself longing for the occasional moments of recent visits, when I could at least have the luxury of five to ten seconds to size up and calculate a shot. In such cases, as is my usual preference, I would shoot on full manual, delighting in being able to be discriminating, even choosy, in my execution. But this time around, I found myself in the company of several other people wherever I went. Thus, their “mission”, whether it was to catch the 7 train or a Broadway curtain, became my mission, meaning I had to be in nearly constant motion. As a result, manual shots were simply going to take too long, with an endless chorus of “wait just a sec!” from me, answered by annoying looks from the other folks in the crowd.

And thus, for the first time in what seemed forever, I went into R&G, or what time constrained fashion photographers call “run and gun” mode. I pre-selected an automatically determined aperture (typically f/5.6 or f/8), with as much customizing for color and contrast as was called for in most urban situations, and locked it in on one of my Nikon’s “U” mode switches, effectively converting the camera into a point-and-shoot. Don’t get me wrong; semi-automatic modes are great. It’s just that I myself hate to overly rely on them, and even in a situation where I have to use them, I wander back into manual as often as time will permit. However, let’s face it, when you’re bringing up the rear on a crowd of people who are hell bent on getting somewhere fast, you either make the deal and make your life easier, or else make everyone’s life harder.

Whoops. What’s this ring marked “focus” for?

The risk of doing this all came back to haunt me later, when I was back in Los Angeles working a subject where I could take my time, and thus was using a fully manual lens. The first time I got into a minor time crunch, I continued to assume, deep in my lizard brain, that the camera would nail the focus for me, when, in fact, I was neglecting my job of doing it myself, resulting in a passel of gooey, fuzzy shots, all wonderfully composed and exposed, all as soft as a 1910 postcard (see above). The moral here is to be mindful at all times, which for me, usually means taking complete responsibility for a shot. Quite simply, convenience makes me lazy, and laziness makes me careless. Like native New Yorkers who’ve just risen to meet the stimulus level of their very busy city, I accept it as the price of doing business.