The First 5 Minutes of shooting are Usually Your Worst
By Kahli April
As photographers, we often arrive at a location with a sense of urgency.
The light might be changing. The subject is about to move. The pressure to "get the shot" is overwhelming. Maybe you’ve driven two hours to get there, or you only have half an hour before you have to be at work.... So what do we do?
We get out of the car, grab our camera, scan the scene briefly, and start shooting.
Tripods go up within seconds. We aim toward the most obvious subject: the mountain, the lake, the glowing horizon. We make a composition quickly, often from wherever we happen to be standing… and take the shot.
But here’s the thing:
Those first 5 minutes are usually when we create our most predictable images.
Seeing vs. Recognising
When we first arrive somewhere, we tend to photograph what we recognise before we photograph what we actually see.
We look for:
the grand vista
the obvious foreground
the reflection
the dramatic sky
Our brains are matching the scene in front of us to images we’ve already seen online, or even our own past work.
In those first few minutes, we’re not responding to the location itself. We’re responding to our expectations of it.
Image by Kahli April
Image by Kahli April
Letting Your Eyes Catch Up
It takes time for your visual awareness to adjust to a place.
Colours become more nuanced.
Light direction becomes clearer.
Smaller scenes start to emerge - patterns in ice, shadows in snow, repetition in trees, textures in rock.
But only if you give yourself the space to notice them.
This is where I often encourage first wandering without a specific goal, allowing curiosity to guide your attention instead of a checklist of “must-get” compositions.
Sometimes the most compelling image isn’t the mountain at all. It’s the way wind has carved lines into fresh snow, or how frost has formed along the edge of a frozen lake.
Try This Instead
Next time you arrive at a location:
Leave your camera in your bag for a few minutes
Walk around without a plan
Notice where your eye is drawn naturally
Look for smaller stories before the big one
Let the obvious compositions exist; you can always come back to them later. But give yourself time to see what’s less obvious first.
Because great photos are created from the moment you stop forcing and start experiencing.
Upcoming Workshops featuring landscape photography opportunities include:
