Get As Much As You Can in Camera

Get it in Camera!!!! Or spend hours trying to just fix it!!!!!

There was a phrase I used to say on almost every photo shoot:

Get as much as you can in camera.

It didn’t mean we couldn’t retouch.

Of course we could retouch.

It didn’t mean we couldn’t manipulate an image, composite something, enhance it, clean it up or do any of the hundred other things that happen between the moment the shutter clicks and the moment an ad appears in the world.

It meant something much simpler:

Do the work now.

If the lighting can be right, get it right.

If the angle can be right, get it right.

If the prop can actually be there, put it there.

If the expression matters, wait for it.

If something needs to explode — well, sometimes you actually explode it.

I once worked on a shoot where we needed a glass to look as though it were exploding. And rather than sitting around a conference table saying, “We’ll just fix that later,” the photographer figured out how to actually do it.

That was part of the craft.

The photographers I loved working with were constantly inventing things. Building things. Rigging things. Testing things. Moving a light half an inch and looking again.

They weren’t resisting technology.

They were respecting the image.

“We’ll Fix It in Post”

Somewhere along the way, “we’ll fix it in post” stopped being a solution and started becoming a production philosophy.

The horizon is crooked?

Fix it later.

The background is terrible?

Fix it later.

We didn’t get enough room around the subject?

Fix it later.

The lighting doesn’t match?

Fix it later.

Someone is standing in exactly the wrong place?

We’ll move them.

And yes, very often we can.

But every problem you knowingly push downstream becomes somebody else’s problem.

Usually the retoucher’s.

Or the designer’s.

Or the art director sitting at a computer at midnight trying to manufacture information that should have existed when the photograph was taken.

And anyone who has done enough production knows the strange truth:

The shortcut is very often the longest route.

You save five minutes on the shoot and spend two hours repairing it later.

Sometimes the Shortcut Comes From Pressure

And I should admit something.

Sometimes I do it too.

Because not every shortcut comes from laziness.

Sometimes it comes from pressure.

A client is waiting. An email comes in marked urgent. Something that was approved yesterday suddenly needs to change today. Another person is asking where the file is. The deadline hasn’t moved, but the work has.

And you look at the proper way to rebuild something, then look at the clock, and think:

Maybe I can just fix this quickly.

Sometimes you can.

Sometimes the quick fix is exactly what the situation needs.

And sometimes the Band-Aid becomes the problem.

That is the part people forget.

A proper solution may take another hour or two. Maybe more. But sometimes giving the person doing the work those extra couple of hours would make everybody much happier in the end.

Instead, we compress the schedule, create an emergency, take the shortcut and then wonder why the shortcut looks like a shortcut.

Experience doesn’t make you immune to that.

In fact, experience can sometimes make it more tempting because you know enough tricks to make almost anything work.

You know how to patch it.

You know how to fake it.

You know how to get it out the door.

But knowing how to make something work is not always the same as knowing you’ve made it right.

And sometimes the most experienced person in the room is the one who has to say:

Give me two more hours.

Not because they don’t know what they’re doing.

Because they do.

Now We Have an Even Bigger Magic Wand

Today we have AI.

And AI is extraordinary.

I use it. I experiment with it. I think it opens creative doors we couldn’t have imagined a few years ago.

But there is a dangerous little sentence beginning to creep into creative work:

“AI can fix that.”

Sometimes it can.

That doesn’t mean it should have to.

AI can extend the background.

AI can remove the person.

AI can create the missing sleeve.

AI can rebuild the wall.

AI can manufacture the tree that wasn’t there.

AI can turn noon into sunset and summer into winter.

Wonderful.

But none of that makes a badly conceived photograph a well-conceived photograph.

Technology can solve an execution problem.

It cannot retroactively create good judgment.

And AI has made the pressure problem even stranger.

You can be pushed to solve something faster, use a tool that makes the fast solution possible, and then be criticized for having used the tool.

Which is why speed cannot be the only measure of whether something worked.

Sometimes the fastest way really is the fast way.

And sometimes the fastest way is to stop, rebuild the damn thing, and do it right.

Schlock Existed Before AI

And to be fair, bad shortcuts didn’t begin with artificial intelligence.

There has always been schlock.

Bad retouching existed.

Bad photography existed.

Bad typography existed.

Clip art existed.

Stock photography used badly existed.

Photoshop produced plenty of crimes against humanity long before anyone typed a prompt into anything.

Every new tool simply gives talented people another way to make something wonderful — and careless people another way to make something faster.

The tool isn’t the standard.

The eye is the standard.

The Best People I Worked With Never Stopped Looking

That may be what I miss most about a great shoot.

People looked.

Really looked.

The photographer looked through the camera.

The stylist looked at the clothes.

The prop person looked at the table.

The art director looked at the composition.

Someone noticed the reflection in the spoon.

Someone noticed the wrinkle.

Someone noticed the label had turned three degrees.

Someone said, “Wait.”

And everyone waited.

Because getting it right mattered.

Not because we couldn’t fix it later.

Because this was our chance to get it right now.

That mindset carries far beyond photography.

It applies to design.

Writing.

Presentations.

Packaging.

Websites.

Ideas.

And yes, AI.

Use every tool available to you.

Push them.

Experiment with them.

Make them do things we never could have done before.

But don’t confuse having a safety net with having a reason to jump badly.

And don’t assume that asking for another couple of hours means somebody is slow.

Sometimes it means they know exactly what happens when you don’t give them those hours.

Whenever you can:

Get as much as you can in camera.

Because “we’ll fix it later” has a funny way of becoming someone’s entire afternoon.