Are you in control

 The shearing shed, what an awesome place to get environmental portraits of the hard working Shedhands and Shearers. Everyone works hard and the whole environment is hard to photograph, lighting is terrible, colours are all over the place, in saying that it is amazing to be there photographing the action. It is a real test of you and your camera gear to get the best out of the situation. How well do you know your gear, do you know what will happen when you? How far can you push your files before they break, how far can you take the ISO before it becomes a problem. You should know all this and more, do you spend time just playing with your camera. I am often asked what is the most important part of being wedding photographer, for me it is knowing your gear, if you have to keep looking at the back of the camera to see what you have taken or have to keep looking to change your settings, you are going to miss the shot, many a good image was taken without being able to see the results on the back of your camera, you had to wait till the film was processed, to see if you got it right, no spray and pray, you only had 36 exposures in the film, that would take about 7 seconds to use up. No metadata. Spent time just playing with your camera, for me I shoot mostly Manual, I am a little bit of a control freak and the camera does what it is told, it does no thinking for me unless I tell it too.Are you one of these people who lets the camera make the decisions for you, how are you going to be creative if the camera make the creative decisions for you?