Get Into The Flow

Achieving creative success through total immersion and practice

Sunrise in the South Dakota Badlands (2021)

I’ve met some great clients over the last 20 years, and each of them brings a different perspective to photography. I remember leading a workshop in South Dakota and we were photographing rock formations right before sunset. I was explaining to a client how he could use his image histogram as his exposure guide to judge whether or not he should use exposure bracketing (HDR) for the scene. I explained that the light meter wasn’t really helpful in this scenario, and to just set his baseline exposure via the histogram and then bracket around it as needed.

This seemed like a revelation at the time, because mirrorless cameras offer us the ability to see the histogram in real-time, right in the viewfinder. This feature makes judging exposure far simpler than ever before, especially for raw image capture. The continued evolution of cameras, from film to DSLRs to mirrorless allows us to connect with our photography in ways that were difficult just 10-15 years ago.

Consider the exposure workflow of a photographer shooting landscapes, starting with film:

• Color Slide Film: Set the exposure via the meter, bracket as needed, wait a week or more to get your photos back to see how you did.

• DSLR cameras: Set the exposure via the meter, check the image histogram, adjust exposure as necessary, and re-take the shot.

• Mirrorless cameras: Judge the exposure in real-time via the live histogram, capture the shot.

It’s this third case, with mirrorless cameras, that unlocks something magical. My client called it “The Flow.” What he meant is that with practice and the tools available in modern mirrorless cameras, your entire shooting experience could be seamless as you looked through the viewfinder. If you know how to find the right settings, you don’t need to interrupt your shooting process reviewing shots and tweaking exposure settings. You can do everything in real-time before you click the shutter. This is a wonderful feeling to experience. Instead of fighting the camera, it becomes wedded to your creative vision.

Getting into The Flow

Obviously, there are more settings in your camera that affect the shooting experience than just the exposure histogram, so let me share some of the features in modern mirrorless cameras that contribute to getting into The Flow: