When I'm teaching photography, I always suggest to my students that they make checklists of to remember things when they shoot. I'm also a fan of handy acronyms to remember them.
Coming at you from Canadian nature, wildlife, and astrophotographer Simon d'Entremont is a video that combines both to help you remember to avoid basic compositional mistakes that plague so many a seasoned and beginner photographer.
d'Entremont introduces the concept of HASTE. Ironically, despite the word itself implying speed, that's not the case.
The "H" stands for highlights, as in, don't blow them. It's impossible to recover detail from an overexposed portion of a photo, and d'Entremont offers a variety of ways to avoid that issue that can keep photographers from messing up that portion of a photo on the scene.
"A" is for and? What does that mean? Instead of just your subject dominating the frame and only your subject, what's the additional component? What's the "and"? Something to think about as you frame your composition. d'Entremont offers a variety of his own photos that showcase the concept of shooting with a little something extra in the frame.
The "S" stands for subject, something I often realized my photos in graduate school were lacking when my professor would comment: "Nice photo, but it's waiting for a subject." It's one thing to have a strong scene, but that scene needs a subject to anchor it. d'Entremont offers a few tips to help add visual interest in your photos in this way.
Many photography instructors have a variation of d'Entremont's "T" or Tree in the head. I myself call it polehead, and it's exactly what it sounds like, where pole-like elements protrude from a subject's head because of careless composition. Easy to make this mistake, but also easy to fix with just a little movement.
And finally, the "E" stands for enough ISO. When I started out, cameras got pretty dicey at ISOs above even a relatively modest 400 or 800. Nowadays, those ISOs are as good as ISO 100 and cameras can push 3200-6400 with decent quality. It's important to get a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action and get photos that aren't blurry, so don't be bashful about using a higher ISO to get there. Your camera can handle it.
d'Entremont breaks down the concept of HASTE and offers many more examples and tips to help avoid these mistakes. Check those out in the video above, and share your own in the comments below.
