Comment by regulation_d
3 months ago
I follow a few landscape photographers on YouTube and really enjoy watching them go out into the field (whether it's an actual field or mountain or beach). They've got their art (at least their own style) so dialed in, that the technical details, the subject, the composition, those are almost a forgone conclusion. What matters at that point is light. And light is luck. The difference between an average image and an outstanding one lies in something beyond their control.
And when fortune smiles on them, they get positively giddy.
I really appreciate people who understand that they have to meet luck half way. Even though they've spent hours upon hours upon hours honing their craft, the thing that puts them over the hump is both unpredictable and uncontrollable.
"Inspiration is for amateurs—the rest of us just show up and get to work." (see interesting shared history of the quote here https://quoteinvestigator.com/2022/08/28/inspiration/ ).
Yeah, that doesn't mean we can't get lucky and run into the perfect circumstance. It means that when that circumstance happens, we'll be there ready to harvest it. Similarly, "the best camera is the one you carry".
And yes, these anti- magic formulas that dispell the idea of magic formula, are magic formulas.
> And when fortune smiles on them, they get positively giddy.
Yes! This is a great pleasure. Satisfaction. There is one series in particular I work on that operates like this. I'm just ready for it - don't even look for it, not anymore - but when I run into the "circumstance", that's a great feeling. And I'm ready for it.
In engineering or software there is still that idea of the back-burner stuff that does need to be done. This idea of staging or starting what needs to be done at the end of the previous day. So that you have something relatively mindless to get you launched the next morning. I also know that anti- "magic rule", even though it's one I have a hard time keeping to.