The Beginner Photography Podcast

The Moment Isn't Everything in Photography

• Raymond Hatfield

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#564 In this episode of the podcast, I dive deep into the idea that while capturing the right moment in photography matters most, it’s not everything. I share my own experiences as a photographer, especially those early days when I felt overwhelmed by all the camera settings—aperture, shutter speed, ISO—and how easy it is to get distracted by what influencers say you need in terms of new gear. I open up about how sharing my photos online sometimes left me second-guessing myself when the feedback was harsh or not constructive, and how important it is for our mental health to not tie our self-worth to internet commentary.

KEY TOPICS COVERED

  1. The Role of Moment in Great Photography - I talk about why the “moment” is king, but also share a story of photographing race cars with my son to show that technical choices—like shutter speed—are what give your images the power to convey emotion and story.
  2. Overcoming Overwhelm and Gear Envy - I reflect on my struggles with self-doubt, gear lust, and how feeling unskilled led me to blame my camera for missed shots. I encourage you to focus on learning and being patient with yourself instead of obsessing over equipment or social media critique.
  3. Shooting in Manual and Preparing for the Moment - I break down my personal workflow, from choosing settings to working with couples, so you can enter your sessions confident in exposure and ready to pay attention to the fleeting moments that matter.

IMPORTANT DEFINITIONS & CONCEPTS

  • Manual Mode: The camera setting where the photographer controls ISO, aperture, and shutter speed, rather than letting the camera choose. This gives more creative control and removes uncertainty about exposure.
  • Exposure: The overall brightness or darkness of a photograph, determined by settings such as shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. Proper exposure is essential for capturing high-quality moments.

DISCUSSION & REFLECTION QUESTIONS

  1. How has mastering camera settings changed the way you feel during a shoot?
  2. Have social media comments ever affected your confidence? How can you protect your creative process?
  3. What can you do before a session to minimize stress and maximize your ability to catch authentic moments?

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Connect with Raymond!


Thanks for listening & keep shooting!

raymond-hatfield_1_05-19-2025_150547:

Moment matters most, but when your settings are on point as well, it feels like you hit the lottery. There's nothing better when it all comes together. Hey welcome to the Beginner Photography Podcast brought to you by Cloud Spot. I am your host, Raymond Hatfield, and today I'm talking about how the moment matters most, but it's not everything. And how to prepare yourself when shooting so that you can focus all of your attention on capturing the right moment and not worrying about your settings. Now, I've said this a thousand times before here on the podcast that moment matters most and it does. Maybe you've heard me say this, but here's the thing is that it's not the only element that makes up a great photo, there is a lot that goes into taking a great photo. And you know this because chances are that you have felt frustration or overwhelm from all of the things that you need to pay attention to while shooting from camera settings, zoom focus, composition, oops, the light changed and now you gotta change your settings again. And, oh, hey, don't forget to capture a great moment. Now photo influencers are gonna pounce on that frustration because, it is their job to sell you new gear. You'll hear things that like, this lens is gonna change everything for you, or this light will change everything for you. This new camera body, this new filter, this new program, this new bag, whatever it is. We'll change everything for you. And there's something about that sentence that creates self-doubt within you, that what you have is simply not enough. So when you do actually go out and you shoot. And you don't come back with a 100% success rate. What you do is you blame it on your gear, and then you start surfing Amazon or aama for all the newest photo goodies. But that self-doubt, that overthinking, that steals your attention while you're shooting away from the real emotion of what's happening in front of you, that's when it becomes a problem. And unfortunately that's happening more often than I'd like to see it. So today my goal is to help you to know what to pay attention to so that you can remove that overwhelm so that you can feel confident with your camera settings. And then you can focus on what matters most moment, not whatever lens or camera, body, or program or whatever is being pitched to you. Well, let me get started by reading this email that I got, this last week. It says, Hey, Raymond. Sometimes I take a photo, which I feel is good, but when I share it on Facebook or Reddit, it gets critiques that I'm not sure how to respond to. Sometimes I even delete the post. Other times I just attempt to improve the image and then share that. And then other times I just, I just type nothing. Sometimes, however, I post pictures expecting a bad critique. Do you ever have times where that applies to you and how do you handle your mental health and self-doubt when it comes to photography? First of all, I absolutely have felt that way before. I've definitely been nervous to share an image, and then when I do share it, it gets just torn to pieces. But here's the problem that I think you're facing, and it was the problem that I faced at that same time as well, and that's that. In photography, there's no. Hard rules, like something like construction, right? A construction worker would have to follow a very clear set of instructions and rules when building a house. Otherwise it's not gonna stand. The same goes for a doctor if they were doing a surgery. In photography, there's just simply a lot of room for interpretation. If a doctor is doing surgery and you end up bleeding to death, the surgery was not successful. Full stop. If you take a photo that's maybe darker than another photo, it's not that big of a deal, and in fact, it may work out better than you thought. You don't know. So when you're learning how to use the tool that is a camera we shoot and then we share the photos in hopes that we get helpful feedback to help us get better, right? That's the goal. But what happens is that because we are unskilled with our camera because we don't know what we're trying to say with our images because we don't have the photographic lexicon to even ask the right question to get a genuinely helpful answer. We ask questions like, what do you think about this photo? Or, or worse, how did I do? And to that answer, right, we get no helpful answers. In fact, everyone who does end up commenting is gonna have some strong opinion about the image, and even further every possible element about that image from your subject, their appearance, to the light. To the moment, to the composition, to the edit, to the pose, to your settings, of course, to what lens you use. They're gonna have an opinion about everything. And that overwhelming amount of criticism is, is it's just gonna make you feel like you did terrible. But the truth is you just. I don't know how to communicate with the tool yet. It's like giving a five-year-old the keys to a car. Like of course they're not gonna get it right away. They're gonna give a car too much gas. They're never gonna use their turn signal. They're gonna take turns way too fast. And honestly lives are probably gonna be lost, just because they're unskilled with how to use the tool that is a car. So even though they may, by the grace of God be able to go from point A to point B, I think that we would all agree that it wasn't very good and that there's still plenty of room for improvement. And I'm telling you, it's the same thing with photography. While you may be able to capture a great moment every once in a while, if the camera makes a decision that you're unhappy with, if the camera makes a decision that makes the photo too dark, or where it misses focus, or it's kind of blurry. Even if you got a good moment, you're still not gonna be like, this is a great photograph. Because while moment matters most, it takes more than just moment to produce a great photograph. So I wholeheartedly believe that if you're a new photographer, the longer that you can wait. to share your images online. The longer that you can focus on understanding how your camera works, how light works and how to use that to your advantage, the better you're gonna be. Like, don't even worry about sharing your work yet, because it's simply not ready. But Raymond, why are we talking about camera settings when you've said a million times moment matters most? And that is a totally valid question because moment does matter most. But again, you have to know how to use the camera to capture that moment. This past weekend, I took my son, to the qualifications of the 8,500 cars are whizzing by us at, 231 miles an hour. The moment here, the story that I'm trying to tell is speed. That is what I need my images to show. So I'm sitting there and I'm just like. I have, the background that I want. We got the pagoda and I'm just sitting right there and I'm waiting for the car to get to the right spot to press the shutter button, right? Like that's the moment that I want, and I've already preselected my shutter speed so that it's slow enough to see motion blur because that emphasizes speed, as you can imagine, with a car whizzing by at 231 miles an hour. I didn't get it the first try. In fact, I didn't get it the first, like 10 laps around. I really had to like, spend a lot of time to try to get the car in the exact spot that I wanted it to be in. Otherwise, it was gonna be covered up by a fence or split in half by the, the guardrails. Like it just didn't look good. I needed an exact moment. So this obviously took some time. My son, however, pulled out his phone, took a photo of it, right of it going past us, and then just used the live photo function to scroll back and find the exact moment that he wanted, where the car was in between the fence, not being blocked by the post or the guardrails or anything like that. Perfect spot on the track, right? First try. Mind you first try. The problem is when you look at his photo and after I eventually got it, you look at my photo, when you look at his photo, it looks like a picture of a car is parked on the track. So he may have got the right composition, but he missed the moment because the moment is speed. I used, like I said, a slow enough shutter speed so that the car had that motion blur. That is speed, that is moment, that's what the moment looks like, and that's a photo that wouldn't be possible if I had no idea what my camera settings did, which ones did what, and how to use them. So, while my technicals may not be perfect because I had to slow down my shutter speed, I had to have an aperture of, I believe it was F 16. That's less than ideal. While the composition was not perfect, the moment which matters most. Was perfect and therefore you can overlook the other settings to a degree. But it took me knowing how to use my camera to capture the moment that I wanted to be able to capture the, the right moment so that you can get to that point. And today, that's what I want to talk to you about. I wanna walk you through my process for being able to go out, shoot, and have a great time while doing it and not feel overwhelmed by all the things that you have to change, all the settings, the buttons, focus, like all those things so that you can just focus on the moment. But before we do this, I think that we first have to address what are the top struggles when shooting. When I look through, all the photos that I don't select, or all the photos that I look at and immediately think, Nope, it's because I missed one of a few things. Either I missed the moment, right? It's not gonna be that great of a photo of there's no good moment, or the photo is either too bright or too dark. We can also talk about the subject not being in focus, but there's so much there that that's something that we can talk about in another episode. So the two biggest issues are either there's no good moment, or the photo is too bright or too dark, right? The exposure's wrong. Now, the good news is, is that if you can fix the problem of the photo not being properly exposed. Meaning, if you can make it so that it's not too bright, it's not too dark, you'll take care of the problem of missing the moment. But it all starts with surprise, surprise, shooting in manual. This is something that many new photographers don't understand. Is that when you shoot in manual, you're in full control of your exposure, right? I still let my camera auto-focus because it will always do a way better job, much faster than I ever could simply, or shooting a manual simply refers to manually controlling your exposure settings. All right? So that doesn't mean that you can't shoot with auto focus, okay? Anyway. I have heard so many times. From listeners and maybe one of them is you, that, you don't wanna shoot in manual because you're so slow when changing your settings or that, you hate having to change your settings for every single shot that you take. You just wanna point and shoot, right? So again, maybe that's you. Maybe you feel that way right now. Maybe you've felt that way recently. Well, here's the good news, okay. That, that many new photographers don't fully understand is that when shooting a manual, you don't have to change your exposure for every shot. You don't have to change your settings. Every single time you take a photo. There's no need to reinvent the wheel here. Your settings are chosen, okay, hold on. Let me back up. the whole point of a camera is to control. The amount of light that enters it. That's it. Your aperture's job is to control how much light enters the lens. Your shutter speed's job is to control how long that light that entered the lens falls upon your camera sensor. And your ISO's job is to determine how sensitive your camera sensor is to the light that hits it for the predetermined amount of time determined by your shutter speed. That's it. So your camera settings are chosen depending on the light and how you want to capture it. So if the light doesn't change, your settings don't need to change either. If I was shooting in a, let's just say an engagement session in the park, I might shoot. A whole session with the exact same settings. Honestly, not that that happened every single time because it didn't, but I would say that it happened more than you probably think that it did. Think about it. If you're in a park, right? Let's say it's three or four in the afternoon, you know, whatever. The sun is your main light source, meaning you don't have. A big flash that you're using to, illuminate your subject. It's the sun that is your main light source. The sun is not gonna change intensity between, let's say, three and 4:00 PM unless of course a cloud goes in front of it. But you understand you're essentially photographing the same light source, hitting the same subject. And if that's the case, why would you need to change how much light enters the camera? Because it remains the same. So therefore your settings don't really need to change much at all in fact, let me share with you how my sessions would typically go so that you can fully understand the process of how I shoot manual, better, and so that you can understand why it's much easier than you think that it is right now, If I were to show up to an engagement session, right? I meet with the couple, I talk to them. Let's say that we're out at a nature preserve, a park, something of that sort. And we're walking down this trail. What I am doing is I'm looking for something interesting, some interesting light, an interesting background. If we're walking through this local park a, a trail, this could be the way that the light comes through the trees and creates this beautiful, spotlight effect. It could be a nice little creek that I want to have the couple walking down. That's step one. Once I identify, say, this little creek area, I then step two, place my couple or my subject there in front of it. Okay. Then step three is that I just dial in my manual settings. So when shooting a manual, the three steps are one, guesstimate your ISO. If there's a lot of tree cover, I'm probably gonna shoot at about ISO 400, just to guess, right? Let's figure it out. Step two is I'm gonna choose the right aperture for how much depth of field I want in the image. Let's say they're, they're pretty far back. I'm shooting pretty wide. F four will be fine. And then lastly, I'm gonna just simply adjust my shutter speed to properly expose the image for how I want it. And then step four, wait for it. You just shoot away like that's. That's it. I'll give my couple, an action or maybe a prompt or, um, I'll ask them a question and then I'll just kind of hover around. Since my camera settings are, are locked in, I can focus on finding an interesting composition for the frame. And once I find one, I just camp out there until a good moment happens and then I just capture that. No lie. I'll even take my camera. I don't have it right here on my desk. I'll take my camera and then, move my eye away from the viewfinder just so that I can look directly at the couple with my bare eyeball. And then I'll press the shutter button when a good moment or a laugh or smile or something that says connection. Happens, and I will know that my camera settings are good because I locked them in earlier. And since the sun didn't just drop out of the sky in the past two minutes, setting this all up, I know that my exposure didn't change so that my settings are correct. Try to think of shooting in manual, like setting the cruise control on your car. you're driving along. And you know, okay, this is approximately the flow of traffic. I'm just going to hit cruise control. And now you don't have to worry about the throttle. You can just pay attention and focus on the road and then just cruise. Shooting manual is, it's slightly more work in the moment, but then it's immeasurably less work and worry that your camera's gonna make a bad decision in the long term. It makes life easier. And trust me, I know how counterintuitive that sounds like. I do. But being aware of what your camera settings are, knowing what they do, choosing the right ones for the shot that you want to capture gives you this feeling of, of freedom, knowing that you can capture anything. If you shoot an auto or some sort of auto mode, like aperture priority, you know how frustrating it is when you see something happening in front of you. You picture the photo in your head, you go to take the photo, and it's nothing like how you see the scene. It's too overexposed. It's too underexposed, you know, whatever. If you don't know what settings are needed to achieve the shot that you want. You're just gonna be left in the water out of luck. And you know, when is a not a good time to be feeling frustrated and that you're dead in the water and that you're out of luck when you're shooting a wedding? and the bride and groom can smell frustration from a mile away. Like, do you really wanna bring that into their day? Or what about if you're just simply trying to spend time with your kids and just capture some, nice photos of them doing something that is meaningful to them? Suddenly this nice moment of you spending an some uninterrupted time with your child, being able to just observe them and the things that they find interesting. No longer is a fulfilling moment for you and your child, but it's one of stress and frustration simply because you're unsure of why your camera is doing what it's doing. Knowing how to use your camera, knowing what your settings do, knowing how to use them to capture an image that you see in your head is paramount to learning photography, and that is exactly why I think that learning to shoot in manual should be required. I'm not saying that you have to shoot manual all the time. In fact. maybe you decide to shoot in aperture priority or another auto assisted mode after you learn manual and, whatever. That's up to you. Like, if a construction worker decides to use a, pneumatic nail gun, it doesn't make you any less of an able, construction worker. You still need to know where the nails need to go. You need to know how to use a hammer just in case of, of a jam or maybe a bent nail or something like that. But learning manual gives you the tools needed to know how to capture the image that you want to, and how to know how to fix an image when it's not turning out the way that you had hoped. Rather than just saying no, well, it is what it is. and that knowledge gives you the freedom to set it your settings and then not worry about it. You can just kind of forget it. Forget about adjusting your settings until of course the light changes or you move to a new location. Now there is still the question of like, okay, well what settings should I use? I can't directly answer that because that. Answer depends 100% on the light that you're shooting in. And because I'm not there with you looking at this light, I can't give you an exact answer, but I can give you a cheat sheet with the camera settings for 10 popular types of photography, along with my own images and the real settings that I use to capture those images. Just to give you a starting place. To know where to set your settings and then how to adjust them to make them work for you. It's totally free, and I'll send it to you right away. All you gotta do is just head to perfect camera settings.com to grab your copy again, perfect camera settings.com to grab your free copy. Okay, so now you have your camera settings locked in. Now what, how do you know what is the right moment to capture? When photographing people, here's what I do. After I find some good light or good background, right? Like I mentioned earlier, after I place the couple there, in that good light or in front of a good background, after I dial in my manual settings, what I do is I just sit and wait. Wait for what The moment. That's right. Congratulations. If you're photographing people, you're trying to communicate in emotion. That's it. That's what the job is. For families, that emotion is connection. That emotion is fun. For couples, it's love. So what moments say those things For my couples, if I'm trying to show off that they're in love, I give them prompts that encourage them to show me that prompts like. Look at each other and tell me about your first date. Were you nervous? Where did you go? I'll ask the other one. What did you think after the date? Did they do anything that made you question whether saying yes to that date was the right decision? Again, all while looking at each other so I can capture them talking about their love and realizing how far they've come together. Maybe I'll ask them to come up with a secret four or five part handshake. Something that'll be their own and something that they can use, whenever they want in the future. Because now I'm capturing them, interacting with each other. I'm capturing them laughing. I'm capturing them, making a physical connection with each other. Or maybe I'll ask them to again, look at each other. And talk about maybe what their lives are gonna look like 10 years in the future. And paint that picture. what does morning time look like for you? Two, 10 years in the future from now? What do you want it to look like? And now I can capture them, future casting and being romantic with each other, building that life together with each other all while my camera settings are locked in. So all that I need to do is just sit there and wait. Wait for the right laugh, wait for the right smirk, wait for the right embrace, wait for the right sexy eyes, and then I press the shutter button. Because my settings are locked in, I can now be present with this couple. I can now enjoy watching this moment. I can now watch this couple become closer together. Moment matters most, but when your settings are on point as well, it feels like you hit the lottery. there's nothing better when it all comes together. So don't think that just because moment matters most, that you can forget the rest. While you can be forgiven, you can't forget it, you understand your camera settings so that you can lock them into place so that you can then focus all of your attention on capturing the right moment. Set yourself up for success. Then focus on the moment. That's it for today. Remember, if you want to grab that free cheat sheet, just head over to perfect camera settings.com and grab your free copy right now. And again. Until next time, remember, the more that you shoot today, the better of a photographer you will be tomorrow. Talk soon.