Taking photographs is all about making choices. What equipment to use, where to shoot from, how long should I wait for something to happen. Do I know what's going to happen?
In this photo I knew what was going to happen and I was aware of my surroundings.I shot this with at f/1.8 @ 1/13th of a second and 3200 ISO from a tripod. There isn't a whole lot of blur because there wasn't a whole lot of moving going on. Well, minus the propeller on the left, but I was looking for that motion blur.

I knew the CASA is built in such a way that having more than one person on the ramp at the same time is dangerous; I knew those paratroopers would be standing around not moving very much as they loaded the aircraft one by one. But they would still be moving, so I couldn't go too slow or I'd have a blurry mess but I didn't have to go very fast either.
Because I knew the limitations of my flash [just a few feet] I knew using one wasn't an option; it was just too far and the area too large an area to light everything up properly without a ridiculous amount of lighting.
I could have gotten closer but then I would have needed a a wider angle lens. Problem, because I didn't have a f/1.8 wide angle lens I would have needed an even longer shutter speed and/or upped my ISO.
When it's dark I need to get the shutter speed right, when it's bright outside I need to get my aperture right, then again when it involves motion shutter again is key, do I want blur or do I want to freeze something?
Photography is all about decision making. I like to make my decisions as soon as I get to an area. Sometimes I make bad choices and have reconsider my plan of attack. Do I mount the Flash? What's the lowest ISO I can get? What two lenses am I going to have on my cameras [yes, I like to shoot with two cameras] Should I be shooting in shutter priority, Aperture Priority, or do I need to worry about manual settings?
I dislike manual settings, I like to let my camera do the math, I worry about the composition.Did I just blow your mind? A photographer who hates manual shooting? Camera's are pretty smart nowadays, they get exposure right a lot of the time. When I used an underwater disposable camera to take photos I was at the complete mercy of the camera and the exposure came out just fine. When I do use manual settings I set it and forget it. At least until lighting conditions change.
Yes, sometimes I am forced to use manual mode because my camera isn't as smart as me, but 99% of the time it knows what to do. A camera however, cannot compose.
And that is why when I look at a photo the first thing I look at is composition. The second, third, fourth and fifth things I look at? Also, composition.
I make my technical choices up front so that when my eye is in the viewfinder the only choices I'm making are about my subject.
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