Most Important Thing you Learned?

[SamReeves]

Show up early.

LOL! Sage advice, 'specially for places like Yosemite.

What I've learned most in nearly a decade of doing 4x5 is to not worry. Just get out there and do it. Too much emphasis is made of measurements and calculations of large format. Lots of people get intimidated as a result and then don't want to try large format.

[Fred Braakman]

Hi,
I've been shooting LF for about 2 years, and I continue to learn from each outing. I agree that we need to shoot and shoot. Not only the shooting part, but I find that printing also has a long learning curve.
There are many "little things" that show up after each time out, that I should have accounted for, but didn't. Like the wind; use an umbrella to protect the camera from vibration, probably this has made the biggest difference for me so far.

Fred

[Mark Sawyer]

Buy the best tripod you can.

Wear sunscreen.

Women will only break your heart.

Jim has all the good lenses.

[walter23]

What about you?

It's okay to go out and not take a single photograph, or to set up an decide not to shoot.

That's the most important thing I've learned.

[Daniel_Buck]

I have found that if I keep looking for a photo that I know is there but can't seem to find what I'm looking for, sometimes it's just not the right time to take it. Move on and I'll quickly find another photo somewhere else! I can always come back to the location and have a fresh look at it another day! (perhaps in different light) Dwell on something to long, and it's kind of forced, and not as good as it could be.

At least that seems to be true for me.

[Ole Tjugen]

Taking pictures is not difficult, seeing which pictures to take - is.

The best way to develop a "personal style" is to keep taking the pictures you like, and be pleasantly srprised when someone recognises the style you didn't know you had.

You can have too many lenses, but I'm not there yet. Bringing four different 150mm lenses can sometimes be a good idea if they're different enough to matter; bringing four different 300mm lenses is too heavy to contemplate.

[Marcus Carlsson]

That you should listen to your heart. If someone else think your images are bad, just ignore them. As long as you feel happy the images are as they should be.

/ Marcus

[Bruce Barlow]

Spend ten days in the field photographing for each day you spend in the darkroom printing. That way, you'll only print the very best.

Proof sheets are like wine. With aging, many images turn to vinegar, only a few become Grand Cru. Never print new images within a month of making them.

Once you've set up to make a picture, look behind you to see if there's a better one there. Often there is, so make both.

Film is cheap, the opportunity is dear.

Polaroid is the greatest learning tool ever invented, and if you do the math it isn't really that much more expensive than negatives/chemical/paper/paper chemicals.

Develop a habit to make one picture a day as an exercise in seeing. Make it your best, and do it every day. Friend Richard Ritter hung a show in a gallery of the best of his one-a-days, so they don't need to be "junk" pictures.

Define projects, do them, and complete them. They can be subjects, technical things, learning exercises - doesn't matter. Define what, how, why, how many, when, and what happens when it's done. The completion part is probably the most valuable thing about them, especially for those of us who have congenital trouble completing things in life.

The best lessons are unexpected, and happen all the time if we're open to them.

[Michael Graves]

"Lightly used" means average to poor condition.

"Great bokeh" means "crappy lens"

Jobo processors are really the way to go.

Life is too short to argue about every little detail.

[poco]

The first few of these are variations on a theme:

-- Never assume you'll be able to come back later for a shot. Something about the scene or conditions will have changed.

-- If you do go back and something about the scene or conditions has changed, don't let disappointment over that blind you from what you DO find.

-- Always ask yourself what is unique about any particular day and spend some film documenting it. If you head out when it's clear and arrive when it's foggy, blow some film on the fog instead of keeping all your powder dry, waiting for it to lift.

-- Take the obvious shot. "Walk the scene" looking to improve things, sure, but first take the shot that attracted you to the place to start with.

-- Know your equipment inside out. Get to the point where you never have to swap the 150 for the 180 after looking at the ground glass. There'll come a shot when you don't have time for it.

-- Don't let the difficulty of a shot affect your judgment of the outcome. Usually it's the easier, more intuitive shots that are most successful as they're less "forced."