One, Two, Three

Shooting is not intuitive for me. My instinct as to where to place a camera is in one word: wrong. I shoot like I draw. Flat. Profiles and head ons. Then I try and translate those directly into a visual frame and something always seems off. I can never explain what exactly it is. But like in a dream where there is a reality that makes no translatable sense once the lights come on, so is my translation of what I see in my head to what I see behind the lens. And I never realized until the last three days it's b/c I don't have realistic ideas in my head. Literally the shot composition in my mind has a feel to it, but that feel won't exist if I actually shoot it that way. I have to relearn everything. Thank God I can finally start.

So tomorrow we are doing a test shoot for Plein Air. Fast and furious. Three of us guerrilla style. And every time we place the camera I am going to think three things:
1. Shoot the action at a 30 degree angle
2. Set the camera below eye level and shoot up
3. Create depth. Make sure there is a foreground, a middle ground and a background.

That is my mental checklist. That will be how I begin my shots. From there I can tweak, but until it is a natural instinct for me to place the camera this way, I will literally be counting one, two, three each and every time.