Someone asked me recently why I like Eminem (+Eminem Marshall Mathers, the best-selling artist over the past decade). She listens to country music… where to start? His first few albums were entertaining, with some funny lyrics, and even funnier music videos, often parodying celebrities and other public figures. But his later work became deeply personal, reflecting challenges he faced in his life. His lyrics are dense, intelligent, and they often resonate deeply as I pursue photography.
The best opportunities in landscape photography often last for a matter of seconds. From a given sunset I may have dozens of good shots, but often only one image rises head and shoulders above the rest, even compared to adjacent frames captured seconds earlier or later.
Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity
One moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip?
You have to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right conditions, and when you are, you’d better have the required skills (knowledge of your camera’s features), and at least for for 15 or 20 critical minutes, stay laser-focused on the task at hand.
You better lose yourself in the music, the moment
You own it, you better never let it go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime
Are you a spectator of sunsets who happens to shoot photos, or are you completely focused on getting the right composition and exactly the right exposures, including a dark enough one so the outline of the sun won’t be blown out when it’s in the composition? Is your lens clean to minimize spots of lens flare? Take yourself seriously. Be prepared, then when those precious critical moments arrive, focus on the task at hand with every shred of concentration you can muster.
To be perfectly honest, travel can be tiring; I’m not always completely motivated or focused. Fully appreciating that reality forces me to confront the fact that moments, days, weeks and months tend to slip inexhorably by in our lives without being fully experienced, let alone best utilized in support of our life or creative goals. Instead of succumbing to the mental medication of TV (or the Internet), I resolve to take full advantage of rare opportunities when they come up (weather, sunrises/sunsets, moon rises, meteor showers, the book project i’m working on). Each is a moment in time and space, never to be repeated. I either make productive use of them, or not. My success, the path I’m currently choosing for my life, depends on it.
Success is my only m@#@&#$!& option, failure’s not
I cannot grow old in Salem’s Lot
So here I go it’s my shot.
Feet fail me not
this may be the only opportunity that I got
My success depends in part on how often and how successfully I take advantage of the cumulative opportunities that are available in a given month and year.
You can do anything you set your mind to
The key portion of that parting statement is the “you can do”: what you set your mind to can’t stay in your mind. Your desires must translates into deliberate and competent action. I need to keep my sensor and lenses cleaner. What can you “do”, in the planning or execution of your photography, to more efffectively move yourself forward towards your goals?
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so r u saying rap reflects to photography or just Eminem ?
Lyrics are poetry, lyrics tell stories, and some deal with the fundamental struggles in life. I know nothing about the musical genre labelled "rap", I know little about Eminem. The words speak of urgency, of performance under pressure, of life-changing opportunities coming down to what you do in a few critical seconds. Every year as I wander the landscape, I encounter many moments like that, when I have a matter of seconds to reconfigure the camera-lens configuration, to change the camera settings, select an f-stop, determine the exposure, ensure that the camera is stable for that exposure, focus properly to ensure adequate depth of field, select and apply a filter if needed, and capture the moment. Ansel Adams has written of moments like that. Galen Rowell experienced them. If you can't simply "lose yourself in the moment", if the artistic choices can't be made on the fly and the resulting configuration and settings required aren't second nature, you miss them. I've missed many in the past. I miss far fewer now.
As a landscape photographer, those are the exactly the moments which can profoundly influence the course of my life. I pursue moon rises and sunsets, lunar eclipses and rainbows at night, meteor showers and comets. I either rise to the occasion and capture the ephemeral beauty of brief moments during those events, or I fail.
You get one shot, one opportunity in your lifetime, to capture each of those moments. Many people assume that you need a lot of time and luck to capture the most amazing moments in nature, but as first-century Roman philosopher Seneca put it, "Luck is where the crossroads of opportunity and preparation meet." Today that's often paraphrased as "Success is when preparation meets opportunity".
We can be spectators in life, sliding through it and seeing what happens, or we can be prepared, position ourselves where those opportunities are most likely to happen, then when they present themselves, capture them. That's what I do with my camera. I can't just do that once, I need to cultivate a portfolio, and a broader of body of work. I need to capture amazing moments in nature and convey them to people around the world, in their homes, at work, many people who don't get to experience enough nature, enough beauty. My reality, the results from my actions, my art, can inspire them, or provide an escape, if only for a few moments, from their daily lives. They can lose themselves in nature's beauty, like I did when I experienced the original moment.
From from the brightest day
to the darkest night,
the deepest depth
to the highest height,
I journey to share with you
most incredible light.