f8 And Be There... Over and Over
Ron DeSantis signs autographs
"f8 and be there"
... Again and again. Over and over.
The motto, “f8 and be there”, is attributed to Arthur (changed from Ascher) Fellig, who was known in his day under his celebrity pseudonym Weegee.
He was a crusty, cigar chomping, news photographer who made equally crusty, hard edged photographs of the streets of New York, during the 1930s and 1940s. He was an "ambulance chaser", and the model for every cynical press reporter-photographer you ever saw in any film noir crime drama of the 1940s and 1950s. If you don't watch old black and white movies, you need to start. You will learn about lighting.
What the "f8 and be there" slogan really means is to not be as concerned with your technique getting the perfect photo as you are with just being ready to capture the moment if it presents itself.
How many times have you fiddled with your camera and missed the shot altogether. It doesn't matter if it is your child scoring a goal or Ron DeSantis signing autographs. The point is to have your camera set for the event before you take a shot.
In this case, I was getting jostled quite a bit. The crowd was large and chaotic after he spoke. So I moved down, away from the mass. I found a more or less clear spot and waited for the action to come to me, camera ready.
The lighting was poor. I had previously set ISO to 6400. The lens was a 30 year old Nikon zoom on a D7500. It works perfectly on the much more recent D7500. The exposure was 1/60th at f7 according to the data on the file. The f7 aperture is pretty close to f8.
The elements came together pretty well, too. The hand on the left with the smartphone taking a picture mirrors the action in front of it. The hand on the right with the book, reaching over the heads in front, trying to get it signed, adds context. I got the security guy, the flags, etc. It's Americana. Who knows right now if DeSantis will be the next President or not. Maybe this will be history. Maybe just a lucky shot.
Lucky shot. All luck. Yep. One exposure was all I got. Not any more. It was f7 in this case and somehow I managed to be there in the right spot.
Selah