
More lightning toward-a-sunset. One of the interesting and rare things here is managing in such a short exposure time to capture two separate strokes of lightning. One could call that luck, but….
“Luck” is a surprisingly common word applied often by non-photographers to other photographer’s images. There is, without a question, an element of luck in many photographs, but when “luck” is used as a dismissive (as it often is), it’s essential to realize to what extent photographers often make their own luck, rather than relying on it.
My awareness of this really increased during my development of my Signatures of the Sun body of work. To begin with, the existence of that body of work could be considered by some to be a lucky accident, in a way, I’ve said at times that it was. But let’s consider the context, I visited a location a couple hours from my home on three different days trying to get a great landscape shot from a specific area, and was stymied each time by weather that changed before I got to the site I wanted to take a photograph of. It was not luck that kept me persisting, it was not luck that, each of those days, kept me photographing despite “not getting what I came for.” It may have been luck that I got strange reflections off the water in a particular stream shot that third day, but it wasn’t luck that I decided to experiment with them, and it wasn’t luck that I decided to process the film anyway, and it wasn’t luck that I recognized that there was something more to be seen in the results. It certainly wasn’t luck that I decided to explore that theme further, leading to one of my most successful images (Burble), and my first gallery show.
Even there, the “luck” of exactly how the patterns would play was not just a matter of luck, it was a matter of persistence, of “farming”. I have nearly fifty frames from the same location and framing as “Descent Into Chaos”, but only one has the most interesting light patterns. Taking those fifty frames, and doing the work to select the right one (which is even harder), were ways of working with the chances of the unknown and stacking the odds in my own favor.
I could say the same of this image. It was luck that I got some information on a good artist residency program in Petrified Forest, but not luck that I was already looking for NPS residencies. It certainly wasn’t just luck that my application was accepted. It wasn’t luck, it was planning that led me to request a monsoon-season residency, I knew I wanted lightning. It was planning, not luck that led me to investigate the Lightning Trigger. It was spending two weeks there (this image was taken near the end of my residency), exploring and experimenting that let me to the locations that I preferred working sunset from. It was experience, using that information along with having learned something about how thundersstorms moved through the park that led me to this particular point that evening, and it was being ready for an opportunity like this day after day after day, that is, it was persistence that got me there on the best evening of the two weeks. Knowing how to use the equipment, knowing its limitations, and being willing to work through hundreds of shots from that evening alone to select the most powerful, that wasn’t luck either.
With any sort of photography you do, don’t give into the impulse to blame an unsuccessful shoot on your lack of “luck.” That will happen, it it’s an easy impulse to give into. Instead, ask yourself how you can improve your odds. Take more shots. Learn to use your equipment so well it becomes second-nature. Learn to understand light. Learn to understand composition. Expose yourself to other phographer’s work. Read. Take workshops. Interact with other folks who do work you admire.
Most of all: Persist, persist, persist. And then edit.. ruthlessly.