ImageMaker photography tip number 4
When you shoot off-tripod, just how flexible are you?
Shooting on tripod is for when you want to really work, carefully, a single position for a while. Shooting off tripod allows us huge freedom of movement, yet many of us do not make as much use of this as possible. Apart from photographers with mobility issues, the rest of us should be using this freedom to move around, up and down, bobbing and weaving like the best of boxers until we find the particular position to shoot from, shoot and then do the same exploration again.
Shooting off tripod is the freedom to move. Shoot verticals and horizontals (portrait and landscape orientation), squat down and slowly rise up to full height to see how altitude affects the shot, walk sideways, backwards and forwards, and rotate. Lie on the ground, climb on something, tilt the camera at odd angles, tilt up and down: fully explore your location.
Whether you shoot continuously while doing this or shoot rarely is up to you. Digital offers the freedom to decide with little cost what actually suits you. Shooting a lot as you explore allows you to latter reconsider and of course allows for the chance discovery later when using a big screen. Shooting less tends to force you to consider more and thus hopefully produce a better result. You can decide what suits you and even change from one to the other as the situation demands.
It doesn’t matter how you shoot, just try to fully exploit what you are doing.