[Sarina Jackson]

When I first started my default photography setting was “fast.” Spray-and-pray. For hundred photos of the same moment on the theory that one of them has to be usable, the same way you buy forty lottery tickets and call it a system. It is not elegant. It is not what the photography books recommend. But it works often enough that I’ve stopped apologising for it, and there’s a certain thrill to it too — chase the moment, don’t think, just shoot, sort it out later.

I used to assume this made me the “fast” kind of photographer, permanently, the way some people, unlike me, are just tall. Decisive. Slightly chaotic. A photographer who treats indecision as the enemy and volume as a strategy.

Except every so often, almost against my will, I slow down. I’ll stop, actually look at the frame, adjust something on purpose instead of by accident, take one photo instead of twelve hundred. It’s a completely different feeling — less chasing, more noticing. And, annoyingly, those are usually the good ones. As if the camera can tell the difference between “I am creating art” and “I am panicking gently,” and rewards the former.

Also film does that, it is impossible to “spray and pray” with film.

So do you have to pick a speed? I’ve decided the answer is no — you can get away with being both, as long as you’re honest about which one you’re doing at any given moment. Some days call for volume. Some days call for a single, deliberate breath before you press the shutter. The trick isn’t choosing a permanent personality. It’s learning to recognise, quietly and a little late most of the time, when the moment has stopped asking for speed and started asking for patience — and being willing to actually slow down and give it that.

What is your speed or are you both?

[Author]

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