As photographers grow and adapt to their client’s needs, they tend to take two technical and creative pathways.
Path one is the perilous path of the “make it up as you go” shooter.
Faced with their subject, this shooter falls back on safe ideas that have worked before or if needed, experiments on the spot, often with surprising results ….. both ways.
Experience reduces risk, or as I have seen recently, sometimes creates a predictable and complacent work methodology.
This is potentially exciting, a little unnerving (or should be), but often inefficient. The shooter has the luxury of time for other things and by deliberately limiting their purview and range of capabilities, they can work within a false sense of security mixed with often habitually well suppressed anxiety.
Sometimes the players, tech and the location work it all out for you, but usually not.
The second shooter works much the same way, but all the experimentation is conducted before it is needed. The intention is for nothing to by left to chance, but the process is usually more one of excited exploration.
Currently reading Dan Winters’ retrospective, I am reminded that the best “on the fly” shooters are rarely that. Joe McNally, the master of flash use in reflexive situations is actually an implementer of well practiced ideas, some of which have been used often before, some not, but all based on literally decades of experience.
He often uses self effacing terminology, but behind that humbleness, is a hard work ethic, years of calculated mistakes and a genuine love of in the field problem solving. You don’t do that well without preparation.
I guess you can get to a place where your experimentation is actually within an envelope of the mostly known, mostly predictable, but that takes a lot of time on either pathway.
When I started studio style shoots, I felt the freedom to working within a controllable space. As I worked, I became more and more aware of the power of less, which came in handy when big ideas failed to fit in small spaces.
The above shoot was completed in a room less than 8x8 feet wide with only room for me, my one light stand and even then I was peaking out from under my single umbrella and the subject. Even the backdrop was leaning on the wall as there was no room for a stand. I knew before hand that a single brolly in a semi-butterfly light configuration would work.
Testing once is better than stuffing up multiple times in the field.
The idea I guess is to stay excited about the potential of what you can do, or intend to anyway, so you will want to experiment in your own time. When the fire goes out, so does your desire to do better. It becomes a chore and chores are rarely done to a higher level.
Reinvent, explore, dare to try, stay motivated, but recognise when maybe, it is time to move on.