I’ve had my Ricoh GR3x for a wee bit more than five months now. Long enough to be pretty familiar with it. Long enough, in fact, to get cocky with it. It’s SO fucking GOOD for shooting quickly and intuitively. So good that I’m starting to get sloppy with composition.

I’m usually pretty deliberate when I shoot photos. I know what I want in the frame, and I know what I don’t want. I’m usually conscious of where I should be standing in order to get the image I want. I’m usually patient. Usually. But I’m so comfortable with this new camera that I’m becoming less disciplined. Sometimes that’s good. Sometimes…not so much.

Here’s an example. I was walking down the street on a grey, sullen day when a burst of sunshine broke through the cloud cover, briefly illuminating a white building. I was immediately taken by the light and all of those lovely vertical lines. There was a sweet green patch of bike lane, some dead brown leaves still clinging to a tree, a guy in a hoodie waiting at the crosswalk. There was a wet patch on the sidewalk where a recycling bin had probably been sitting, and it mirrored the patch of turf in which the tree had been planted.

There were a LOT of elements and shapes all working together. So the Ricoh came out of my pocket, and I glanced at the screen, and took a snap as I walked. I mean, I didn’t even pause.

I chimped a quick look at the image without missing a step, and lawdy, I was so smug. Not so much with the image itself (it’s not a great photo) as with the way I shot it–on the move. It wasn’t until I got home and downloaded it that I realized I’d fucked up.

Cut off the top of the light pole.

It’s not a huge deal, partly because, as I said, it’s not a great photo to begin with. But it’s a reminder that speed and convenience aren’t always benefits. If I’d paused for a moment…if I’d taken a half step backward…if I’d followed one of the very basic rules of composition (check the edges of the goddamned frame), it…well, it still wouldn’t be a great photograph, but it would have been a properly composed one. I tell myself, “Self, if I’d paused I might have lost the light!” Which is true. But it’s also true that I wasn’t concerned with the light any more than I was concerned about the composition. I was only thinking about how cool it was to be able shoot that quickly and with such confidence. The confidence was misplaced.

Lesson learned.

(Maybe. Some lessons need to be learned repeatedly.)