I use all of the above, and my success rate is still less then what I would like.
To help my yeilds, I have also resorted to what I call predictive shooting. When I arrive in area I intend to work for a week or two whether by llamas or by car I line up about 15 to 20 shots during off hours ahead of time. Some are morning shots, some are evening shots, some are sunrise shots, and the list goes on. I work through all the details of each photograph such as perspective, composition, camera movements, lens, required DOF, aperture settings, and tripod settings. It is not unusual for me to spend two or more hours constructing a predictive shot. All of this informations gets logged into my database on my Palm Pilot including the GPS location, and a simple digital point-n-shoot image of the composition. So when exceptional light all of a sudden materializes I race to one of these spots I think will best exploit the moment and in a matter minutes I am ready to pull the trigger.
I was just in Ridgway Colorado when the light punched the through the clouds one evening and in three minutes by car I arrived at one of my predictive spots and in few minutes thereafter I nailed the it. This sort of thing happened three times while I was there and each time I nailed it, but on my fourth try I did get a speeding ticket so I did not get that one. Oh well.
Currently I have over 300 predictive compositions throughout Colorado I have not taken yet. On my way home from Ridgway I was passing through Nathrop Colorado and a storm was breaking up. The light and clouds hovering below and above the 14,000' peaks was amazing. I remember two years ago I had prototyped a predictive composition there. I pulled out my Palm Pilot looked it up and raced to the spot. I will not tell how fast I drove, but it was close to 2X the limit. Jumped out of the car, let me see 4x10 panoramic, 720mm lens, tripod at standard height, no camera movements, and f32.0. There were horses in the field that was light by golden fall light. The Cottenwoods surrounding the field were close to full fall colors, and they were glowing. The mountains were jet back (northern aspect) with fresh snow on them, and the clouds were backlight with brilliant light streaming through. I nailed that one with six sheets of film just to make sure.
I would say that predictive shooting has by far resulted in much higher yields for those in the moment shots then anything mentioned so far on this string for me. The biggest problem with just wondering around and waiting for something to fall out of the sky is you still have to compose and construct the composition and that is what takes most of the time. If you can do your homework ahead of time, then I believe you will greatly increase your chances of photographing exception moments with exceptional compositions that will result in amazing images. At least that is what I have found for me.
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