Setting Priorities

When shooting on location under time constraints, you will become familiar with juggling priorities and making sacrifices. For example, I know how to crop the sun out of a flare situation or to move the halos away from the body. But sometimes, I break my own rules to prioritize the dominant geometry of the location at hand, if you will.

To illustrate this point, take a look at image 14.6. First and foremost, this staircase has beautiful geometry. But it also has depth, because it overlooks the city of Tucson, and the steps create patterns and repetitions. Those three elements were too many to ignore. I knew I had to use that staircase, but the sun’s location relative to it was causing very strong lens flare. I could not use a tight crop as I normally would, because it would also crop out the staircase. Blocking the sun with the bride’s body was not an option, because the bride was too far from the lens and I was using a wide-angle lens to exaggerate the perspective of the staircase. Under these circumstances, blocking the sun with her body would have caused almost 50 percent of her body to disappear.