Last week I wrote about and showed this image:

Never be satisfied while the light is still good. Check your histogram and your composition to insure that you have nailed the shot. Quickly shoot a number of images. Finish up! It does not make sense to shoot another 50 images of the same composition. Time is of the essence when the light is great. Either find different compositions to shoot or move to the next location - provided the next location is close because good light can often be fleeting and you don't want to be on the road for long when the light is wonderful. Please don't fool yourself thinking that you will continue shooting the same scene over and over with minor changes in composition. You composition needs to be very different to work. Let's face it, if you shoot 50 slightly different images you are just going to keep the best one. We don't want to waste good light shooting 49 more images of the same composition. That being said, I do believe and advocate working the scene to get many shots of the same place PROVIDED the compositions are different enough to count as a totally different image. If that cannot be done, move on and move on quickly.

          So after shooting the image above I knew the good light was going to linger for a little while longer as the sun still had to dip beneath the clouds. I knew the area well; I believe in scouting to prepare for times like this. There is no time now to look and search for a secondly shot. Second locations need to be known ahead of time if possible. I jumped into my car and moved on to the next location only three minutes away.

          Clouds move. The sun is setting. Things happen quickly now. There is no time to figure out from which angle the scene looks best. These are things that need to be worked out when the light is terrible. That is the time to walk this way and that way to explore the scene. Now on the scene I know where to stand because I have already figured all that out on previous visits. Within a minute I am setup and ready to shoot. This is good because just then:

Between the movement of the clouds and the sun I had but a minute to shoot before it was all over. Working ahead of time and having second locations ready pays off. I got two nice shot within minutes of each other. Each shot is totally different in composition. I do photography even when I am not shooting. I scout, plan and get ready for when I actually shoot.

          Do the work ahead of time and you too will be rewarded.