What is most frustrating to me at this time...

I really want to perform at the highest level I can when I do my photography.  But compromises abound.  Time and opportunity are the major obstacles.

Am I in the right place at the right time to have OPPORTUNITY to capture a stunning shot?  It is a combination of skill, anticipation, training, luck, access, knowledge, and probably a bunch of other factors that escape me that go into getting a truly inspirational shot.

Having the base line skill is so very helpful, as is having the best equipment you can afford.  Neither are essential, but certainly very helpful in pulling off a shot under less than ideal circumstances.

Lately it seems the major hindrance to my success is TIME.  Even when I have tried to construct a portrait shoot, the time of the subject is minimal and adds to the stress of the moment and limits my ability to experiment and find that sweet spot of a shoot.

For instance I am working hard [at least I think so] at trying to construct a variety of various shoots with different subjects.

Most recently I finally got a hold of an old friend, who had some assets in his possession that I thought would make for an interesting scene.  These items are a part of who he is now as well as who he was in the past.

After weeks of calling a bad cell phone number, I got the right number, found a day he was off, and he had time to work with me.  We arranged a time and place to do the shoot.  I checked the weather.  Got my equipment ready, charged the batteries, cleaned the lenses and bodies, set up my kits [ what I call my combination of shooting devices, a body, lens, accessories, etc]  I would use three kits, one with a fast lens 50mm f/1.8 for hand held use, one with a variable but high quality piece of glass, a 24-70mm on a tripod, and a 100-300mm on a monopod.

Got set up in my front yard and was ready almost 35 minutes before the appointed time for the arrival of the subject.  He had a short window of availability on Friday.  He had to be somewhere at 12noon.  So we picked 10:300am and would shoot until 11:15am to give him ample time to get to his destination.

I sat as it started to mist just a bit, but the cloud cover gave me beautiful light.  I got out and shot the trees and fall leaves with their near full term color.  Test shots proved rich and lovely in terms of the light as I had hoped.  The mist was very faint, I covered my equipment, it was at ambient temperature, so no fogging would occur, an important lesson that I have learned to account for over the years.

HAVE YOUR EQUIPMENT AT THE SAME TEMP AS YOUR SHOOT WILL OCCUR!

10:30 am comes and goes, how long do I wait to get nervous, 5 minutes, 10?  15?  I know this person well in some respects but not so much lately, is he dependable as he used to be?

15 was my limit for as I could calculate his time was starting to go away.  He lived about 10 - 15 minutes away.  He answered that he was nearly ready and would be leaving soon.  He arrived at my site at 11:05 am.  He was supposed to leave at 11:15am at our original planned shoot timetable.  So I knew I had to work fast, I shot over 200 frames in about 20 minutes, he stayed on until 11:25 and left with ample time for his next task.

Did I get done what I needed?  I think so, this is one time experience helped, and the three separate set up kits helped me gain some different prospectives quickly with few delays. 

But I KNOW that I left some great shots on the floor as they say in Hollywood.  I did not get a chance to work the subject into an iconic position, to get HIM as I know him as well as I might have had I the time to work with him for a pose and position that I could fell my way into.

He was tight and his expressions were tough to feel good about, so I took more shots than I might normally have done, in the hope that I might catch him at ease between the ready aim shoot times.

As I am working the after shoot photos, I find some gems, ones I like, ones that I feel the subject will like, ones others might like, I sure hope this is the case.

Frustrated in that I had a great opportunity, I controlled the where, the light was predicted and it produced the stellar results I had hoped, but the subject was a fleeting moment and I had just 20 precious minutes to work my magic.

This is why we MUST know what we are doing, to make the best of these times.