Every photographer experiences happiness or disappointment when looking for the first time at images they have captured. For me there have always been two extremes, the shot you never expected to get, and the shot you haven't got. By way of an explanation here are two shots I took in the past 7 days.
The first was taken at yesterday's 5 kilometre Parkrun in Bushy park. I had been stood in the middle of the course about 300 metres from the start line. As the race started I took several shots and with 800 runners heading towards me I made for the side line. I knew I wanted to take a shot from almost ground level, so using my second camera with a fast zoom lens, I sat down, placed the camera practically on the ground, pointed it towards the runners and pressed the shutter. I had no idea what I was shooting but I was curious to see what, if anything, I got. What I got was this.
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24mm f/5 1/320sec ISO 200 - Nikon D200 Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8 ED
There are a number of things I don't like about this shot. The face of the runner in the foreground isn't in focus, the composition isn't wonderful and there are large sections of the image that are blown out. But at communicating what was happening as hundreds of keen runners ran past me on a sunny Saturday morning in south west London, I think it works.
The second shot was taken the previous Saturday evening. The previous day my sister had gotten married in Dublin, and on the Saturday evening family and friends met at a bar for a few post wedding drinks. On the wall of the bar was a large photograph of a young Bob Dylan. It made for a very interesting piece of artwork, and I though it would form a good backdrop for a photo. Looking at the shot below it's perhaps difficult to explain just how dark this bar was, the camera has done a remarkable job of soaking up what light was available, but it was very dark. For those who understand exposure, just look at the exposure details!
24mm f/2.8 1/6sec ISO 3200 - Nikon D300s Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8 ED
A lot of what is wrong with this shot are down to the fact it was really too dark, but a flash would have spoiled the mood of the shot and probably the guests. This is the best of about 20 shots I took trying to realise the image I had in my head, but despite the effort I put in, this doesn't communicate how it felt to be in this bar in Dublin at that time. For me, it doesn't work.
These two shots represent the extremes of that feeling you get when looking at images you have just taken. One image was just point, shoot and hope, and I feel rewarded by the outcome. The other was the result of some planning and experiment (and to be honest, a pint of Guinness), but having seen the final images, I feel disappointed.
Many years ago I used to hand-load black and white film from bulk rolls into reusable 135 film cassettes for use in my old Olympus OM-2. It was cheaper then buying individual rolls and by using bulk film and loading the film into the camera in a darkroom you could get 40 exposures from a roll. It seems incredible that today I can shoot thousands of digital images onto a single memory card, it wasn't that long ago that I was content with getting 40 exposures out of a roll of film.
Regardless of whether I shot 40 black and white exposures or thousands of digital images, I still get that brief moment of fear just before I look at new images for the first time, and as with many things, it's that fear that motivates me to try and take better shots.