To quote a great golfer, “The more I practice, the luckier I get” (Lee Travino, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Jerry Barber…who knows).  I use this to illustrate that what looks like luck is sometimes just patience.  It’s like when you “know” you have the shot in the camera.  The ability to wait for the right moment to click the shutter involves anticipation of what’s coming and having patience.

This image was for the Charlotte Convention Center and Visitors Bureau.  We were shooting simultaneously from this angle and 90degrees from this angle across the street.  Here’s the catch: we couldn’t have any people in the shot and there was a convention going on with over 10,000 people at the same time.  We weren’t allowed to approach anyone at the convention to ask them to move or to stop any flow of people leaving or entering the building.  Being a dusk shot, you only have a few minutes with the perfect light.  We had to wait until there wasn’t anyone on the sidewalk because post would have been difficult.  So we waited and watched.  It was like the place had a pulse…hundreds of people could be at the doors in seconds.  There are actually a bunch of people to the left of the frame.

We took MANY exposures and bracketed all along the way.  There was 1 perfect shot.  No people.  Post production for spotting and the usual stuff.

To see more of our architecture images, go HERE. If you have questions about any of our images, drop me a line and we will use it in a future post.

Was it “luck” or “patience”?

More later

ML