Spur of the moment shots versus set up shots

[MHD]

I am going to define a scale...
From 1-10 are you a set up the shot and take it photog or are you a snap the moment type of photog, where:
1: I set everything up.. foam core board all the way! only studio for me baby!
5: I do a pretty even mix of both
10: I live for the moment baby! Nothing set up about my shots! I would like it if the subject didnt even no I was there!

[xerubus]

I'm a sucker for setting everything up... camera set to M... manual focus... and away i go...

i have a great little ritual dance which goes something like this... join fingures together and form a frame... walk in varied directions with makeshift frame in front of face... bob up and down until... voila... the shot i want...

[Greg B]

I'm a sucker for setting everything up... camera set to M... manual focus... and away i go...

i have a great little ritual dance which goes something like this... join fingures together and form a frame... walk in varied directions with makeshift frame in front of face... bob up and down until... voila... the shot i want...

Now that would be worth seeing.

My Uncle Gil with his rangefinder Yashica would stuff around for a long time before taking a family snap. He was legendary. And people always had this strained smile and slightly irritated look on their faces in all his shots. There would be cries of "Come on Gil!!" Good times.

[JordanP]

I'm one of the fence sitters on 5. I found that I probably would have been about a 70/30 (70 percent set up) but over recent times I've been trying to develop my skills to capture the moment. Ultimately I would love to head in the direction of photojournalism - thus the sway to 50/50.

Still always shoot Manual .... but 98% of the time auto focus

[Onyx]

I love the spur of the moment. For me the challenge in capturing the shot is freezing the right moment, and having the skillset necessary to have everything correct/favourable - from exposure to focus to depth of field... I even further challenge myself by shooting JPGs and not raw, so I have even less latitude for those latter factors going slightly wrong.

Greg's uncle Gil sounds very similar to my mum. When we was younger, I hated having my picture taken as it would take a full 2 minutes standing there, inevitably squinting at the sun, waiting for her to adjust focus, exposure, etc on the all manual Nikon FM. Which is ironically in my posession today.

[gstark]

waiting for her to adjust focus, exposure, etc on the all manual Nikon FM. Which is ironically in my posession today.

Onyx,

Drop a roll of AP100 into it, snap Birddog's 85mm onto the front, and go and have a play.