RANDOM HARVEST

By MICHAEL PERKINS

HAVING LIVED IN BOTH FILM-AND-PIXEL-BASED UNIVERSES, I find myself leaning toward the advantages of both ways of making pictures, favoring one sensibility or the other, based on the situation. In my film days, I was trained to carefully approach my shooting based on the immutable reality of the frame count. If I purchased a 36-exposure roll, that number loomed before me like a neon road sign with every shot I framed up. With money a major determinant as to whether I could shoot at all, budgeting my shots as I went upped the ante on intentionality. Only pros whose work was underwritten either by deep-pocketed sponsors or their own flush bank accounts could snap away with complete abandon.

In the digital era, anyone can “run and gun”, that is, crank out a virtually infinite number of frames, either because they want to try various approaches or because they figure that they can select some salvageable images from the flurry of shots they take…a kind of random harvest idea, that is, “one of these must be good.” And, being human, and therefore on mental auto pilot (or just plain sloth), I have, many times, decided to just shoot a whole lotta stuff real fast without a lot of forethought, figuring either God or me will sort out a masterpiece further on down the road to Editville.

But I still occasionally go back to my old “budgeting” habits, because with that heightened feeling that “I only have so many tries as this” comes a return of the intentionality, the deliberation, and, almost always, a slowing. Slowing myself down to ask what should be Question One, or “what am I trying to actually do here?” invites planning, and planning, in the moment, is always better than editing in the aftermath. Sure, sometimes I want to shoot instinctively, as if I have a gun or a deadline to my head. Sometimes, however, I just have to go back into analog mind. What if I only had five frames to nail this shot? Or three frames? Or one? Yes, that’s it. What if I were shooting film and this was the last frame on the roll? What’s my “make or break”, Hail Mary move here?

The young lady you see here is illustrative of both analog and digital mindsets. She first got my attention walking by herself, but I could see she was approaching a group of friends, and so, if I wanted only her in the frame, I would have to shoot lots of “maybes” and shoot them fast before she caught up with them. Then, moments later, she said goodbye to the friends and was walking alone once again, over a fairly long stretch of beach, allowing me to pick my moment in just a frame or two, one of which you see here. Instinct and deliberation.

Putting yourself on notice, or arbitrarily putting obstacles in your own path, is a good way to check your thinking, to be sure whether you are, in fact, trying to create something, or whether the use of your trigger finger is merely a nervous tic. Convenience is wonderful, but not all great things come easy. Be suspicious of shortcuts and “time-savers”. You’re trying, after all, to save something far more important than just time.