Photography And Access

Photography And Access

by William Lulow

I have written many articles about photography, its various techniques and philosophies of why and how I work, but one indisputable fact about all of it is that you cannot make any images unless you are actually standing there and have a camera at your disposal. You need ACCESS to whatever it is you wish to photograph. It seems like a given axiom, but it is one that needs to be mentioned from time to time.

We finally got a decent sunrise at our vacation spot on Longboat Key, Florida after a month of probably the worst weather since we have been coming here for the past eight years. So I decided to wake up early and go out to try to capture some sunrise light here. I was thinking about just going back to sleep, but my photographic instincts got the better of me and I got dressed, grabbed the gear and the tripod and went out to see what the light was like. I was actually a bit late, as it turned out, but still was able to capture some of that “first light” imagery. Here is one:

Make sure you can find the crane wading in the water here. The light was just right to make a good picture of a kind of mundane bridge. The light says it all here. Camera was my Canon 90D, with the following settings: ISO 640, f/10 @ 1/125th of a second. There was also some post-production work done here to enhance the photo a bit.

Here is another photograph:

For images of performers, you definitely need to be in attendance AND have a decent spot from which to make your pictures:

So, it is all about being at the right place at the right time. Access means that you are in the stadium, at the performance AND ready to make images. It means that you are in the same room or location of the person, place or thing you wish to capture. You also need to be prepared to make the images you want. You need to know about lighting conditions, how to make your pictures sharp enough, how to print them correctly and even how to display them. But you cannot make any photographs at all unless you are there!