It’s Guest Blog Wednesday featuring Ted Waitt!
My name is Ted Waitt, and I’m an editor at Peachpit Press / New Riders. Since 2004, I’ve had the honor and privilege of working with Scott Kelby, as well as his extremely talented and hardworking team in Florida.
For many years now, Scott’s blog has been the first thing I read every day—and I suspect I’m not alone. I’d like to thank Scott for the opportunity to blog here. And I’d like to publicly thank him for all of the opportunities that working with him has afforded me over the years. Thank you, Scott.
I’ve had a DSLR for just under three years now. I don’t shoot nearly as much as I’d like, but I do venture out in San Francisco somewhat frequently. These solo, meandering photo walks are often as much about taking pictures as they are a chance to just get out of the house and see the city. Often I return home empty-handed, so to speak, but that’s okay. And every once in a while, I come back with a decent shot.
About a month ago, a former colleague recommended me to a friend who was starting a holiday photo blog called Photo Advent. The idea behind the blog was to get someone to contribute one image each day—along with a “lesson learned”—as a kind of holiday gift to the photo community. I agreed to do it, though it seemed a bit of a stretch that I’d have much of a lesson to give, and I haven’t ever really shared my photos much beyond posting them to Flickr.
I honestly thought the post would go up, a friend might see it, and that would be it. Well, that’s exactly what happened…except the friend was Scott! He liked the shot and asked me if I’d repost here as a guest blog. So, without further ado, here’s that post (slightly edited):
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Moody’s Jump
Metadata: ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/1000 sec., 17mm on a Canon 17–40mm f/4, Canon 40D
This is the first image I ever asked permission to take, and it was one of the first shots where I had started to become conscious of the direction and quality of light. It was August in the Mission in San Francisco. I went out for a walk with my camera late in the afternoon. I had no particular direction in mind, but noticed that the light was low and strong, so I suspected I’d be shooting either in open shade on the west side of the street (in, for example, the shade of a building) or with that hard, directional light if shooting the east side of the street.
For me, what usually happens in a situation like this is one of two things: either a) you take exactly zero shots and, within an hour, find yourself succumbing to the open door of a bar; or b) you take a bunch of crappy shots, knowing you’ll go home, import them (“Maybe something will look good on that big monitor”), delete them all, and then head to the bar.
But eventually, persistence pays off. If you go for enough walks, you will eventually, definitely get some shots. Walking up Harrison, I saw three guys around 20th, on the east side of the street, jumping their bikes from a ramp onto a loading dock in that half-industrial, half-residential space between the Mission and Potrero Hill. They were all a bit older than one might suspect—20s to early 30s. (But then again, it’s San Francisco, where age seems almost always irrelevant.) I watched them for a couple minutes, then decided to approach one of them and see if they’d mind if I took a few pictures. What the hell, right? They decided that one of the guys, who called himself Moody, would be the best subject—as he could get the highest on the jump. (By the way, Moody looked a lot like Will Oldham.)
All I knew was that I wanted a fast shutter speed to freeze the motion, and that I’d have to shoot in continuous “burst” mode to increase the chances of capturing Mr. Moody at the height of his jump and in an interesting composition. So I switched to Shutter Priority mode and dialed in 1/500 of second—which, after looking at the shots of the first jump, ended up being not quite fast enough. Increasing the shutter to 1/1000 of a second worked (though it couldn’t’ve hurt to go a bit faster; the shot is still a bit soft…). I shot another jump, showed the guys the back of the LCD, and—with the exaggerated effect of the wide angle making it look more dramatic than it really was—they became somewhat interested. The shot here came on the third and last jump I shot. (I didn’t want to take too much of their time.) I grabbed Moody’s email address and sent him the shot later that night.
The lessons here are: a) Just look around and consciously make note of the light—the hard light creating the hard shadow on the wall is what, for me, makes this shot; and b) approach people. Seeing the light quickly gets easier and easier, but walking up to someone is still difficult for me; I approach only about 5–10% of the people I would really like to shoot. But it gets easier, too, and the worst thing that can happen is they say no. You’ll get exactly what you would’ve gotten had you not approached them to begin with: nothing.
On second thought, I suppose the worst thing that could happen is that you’ll get robbed, shot, and left to bleed out on the sidewalk, but the chances of that are probably pretty low, one would think.
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So that’s pretty much it. Thanks again to Scott for the opportunity to share the post and the picture!
Here’s the ol’ Twitter handle if you’re so inclined: @TedWaitt. And if you’d like to check out a few more shots, here’s a small, fairly random set on Flickr.
And, of course, be sure to check out all of Peachpit’s great stuff at peachpit.com ;)
Thanks!