Today I was pointed towards this article by Merlin Mann titled ‘Photography, and the Tolerance for Courageous Sucking’. See, lately I’ve been feeling kind of down because I don’t drag my camera everywhere, and I don’t take a thousand pictures every month, and it makes me wonder if I’ve started to lose interest in photography as a whole.
And then I get a chance to read an article by a guy who is going through everything I went through – that confusion, that feeling of not understand what’s going on inside the equipment, that desire to take pictures every single day knowing darn well that the vast majority – if not all of them – are going to be worthless, and those moments of crazy elation when you get that burst of inspiration and try something a new way, or approach the problem from a new angle (no slight photography pun or article content reference intended).
Reading his thoughts, laid out much better than I could have said or done when I was in that same place, made me realize that I’m not taking a thousand pictures every month because I’ve finally cleared a hurdle I didn’t know I was even approaching. I feel confident every single time I pick up my camera. I feel like I know what I’m doing, I know how to get what I want, and faster. And yeah, I still experiment, but it doesn’t take me 30 or 50 or 100 shots to figure it out every time now. One or two and I can see the problem, a few more to make some changes, and then I have what I wanted, faster than before.
Because of what he wrote I’ve gone from feeling kind of badly about how few pictures I’ve been taking to feeling kind of good about my skill, and said skill being at the level I always wanted but didn’t realize I wanted.
Plus, you know, in one week I’ll be in a new environment with new places and people to photograph, and that’s good. I can’t wait. New things.
So thanks, Merlin. I think I needed that.
[EDIT: looks like Atox enjoyed the same post but with a different perspective]
Filed under: politics
This is something I never expected and yet by which I am immediately and completely delighted:
Ralph Stanley endorsing Barack Obama for president
Filed under: politics
Todd Alcott on Sarah Palin:
When I go to apply for a job, that is, when I go to a studio to pitch an idea for a movie, I am expected to, at the very least, have some basic understanding of what I’m talking about. If I pitch an idea for a movie about, say, a talking giraffe, the studio folk have a reasonable desire that I be able to explain to them why a movie about a talking giraffe is a good idea, and a reasonable expectation that I deliver that explanation in a coherent fashion.
If I can’t give a compelling argument for why the Talking Giraffe Movie will be a four-quadrant smash, I don’t get the job.
If I go to the studio people and say something like “Talking Giraffe, tall, big movie, long neck, animal, a mammal really, long purple tongue, long box office lines, ‘Mommy Mommy, let’s go see the Talking Giraffe Movie!’ Kids love Giraffes, the horns, on the head, little tufts of hair on top, I spoke to an elderly woman in a nursing home once and she told me her one regret in life was that she had never seen a movie with a talking giraffe, and the smell of the popcorn in the lobby, the excitement of movie-going! A giraffe, talking! Isn’t that what it’s all about?”
If I do that? I don’t get the job.
