I shoot many different types of photography, for pay, with repeat customers, so take that for what it's worth. I've been shooting since the mid-80s, take that for what it's worth. I've done many sports photos... action, posed, team, soccer, football, baseball, basketball, low light, day light, indoor, outdoor. I've done more weddings than I can remember. I shoot quite a bit of candid dress rehearsal theater. I do family portraits, events and senior portraits and have sold quite a bit of landscape and architecture images. I don't do it all, but I do a lot... about 20,000 to 30,000 images a year.
With all this shooting I adapt to the situation at hand. I know how to use what I got given a certain amount of time to get a reasonable shot. But, that being said I don't know many people who can nail the shot everytime in every situation with the first shot. It happens once in a while. And most of the time most of us can get reasonable shots very quickly. But. If we have a little more time I think all of us can do better. Of course you don't want to kill a whole afternoon getting one team photo, but if you know you have 5 minutes instead of 30 seconds who wouldn't, or who doesn't make use of that time by fine tunining?
Here's how I typically work when given a reasonable amount of time.... evaluate the situation.... often times you know before you even get there what most of the situation is going to be like (available light, subject matter, etc.). Set the camera settings appropriately as your best probable setting. Shoot. Evaluate. Look at the histogram. Look at the image. Use both to determine what can be done to improve. This could be using EC to dial down ambient and FEC to dial up flash exposure, or picking a slightly different aperture or ISO to get a faster shutter, or maybe even adding another flash or two for more even lighting. Whatever it may be there is almost always something that can be done to fine tune an already acceptable image. And many times, if you somewhat know what you are doing it only takes a brief amount of time to make these adjustments and shoot again.
Recent example... On Friday I was hired to do an on location portrait of a young man in a suit and tie outdoors at a local park. We only had about ten minutes to shoot. So I meet him at the park about 30 minutes before sundown, we find a bunch of trees grouped together and I place him next to one of them with his back to the sun. The sunlight is just barely streaming through the trees and only hitting the back of his head and shoulders. Perfect rim lighting/hair light. I have a flash on camera on a bracket for fill. I assumed that the grove of trees to one side and open area to the other would provide reasonable modeling light and then use my flash for fill. Well after three or four shots and adjusting the FEC, that were perfectly acceptable by the way, I realize that I was not going to get the modeling light that I wanted... something like a 2:1 ratio, narrow lighting loop pattern is what I was after. So I throw another flash up on a stand into an umbrella, dial in the power to ratio with my on camera flash and bingo, we nail it. We were there 10 minutes, I took a dozen shots and we were done.
So I guess it comes down to using the time you know you have (or don't have) wisely and adapting accordingly. To derive that a photographer is incompetent because he takes too long and shoots too much, or uses the beep for focus lock is, in my mind, not a very intelligent deduction.
The older kids are not much better either.
