Film is, and now even more so, megabytes are, cheap. So that making a mistake, or in this case, three of them, ain’t a big deal. As a beginning photographer understand that every click of the shutter that produces a mistake is one less bad picture you’ll have to take down the line. I truly believe we have a finite amount of mistakes to make as photographers, and the sooner you get them out of your system, or in this case, camera, the sooner you’re going to start making striking photographs on a consistent basis.
Starting out, I was lucky to get a good frame per week of constant shooting. Roll upon roll would get sleeved and then I’d eagerly look on the lightbox hoping against hope that there’d be a shot worth the time I had put into the effort. When a single frame showed itself to be anywhere close to good, it was cause for celebration.
It was also cause for study; What did I do right this one time? Even more important are the lessons to be learned from what I did wrong. Exposure? Composition? Developement? Selection of subject matter? Was it all bad? And what could I do to change it so that the next time I was faced with an opportunity to click the shutter I’d make the right choices and end up with something worth printing?
The most important thing is to keep shooting. Keep making mistakes, who knows, one day you might get lucky and take a really cool mistake. Or in this case three of them.
February 19th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
and this is where using a lab for developing comes in handy. blame.
and I certainly hope you’re right about the finite mistakes thing. haven’t hit my quota yet, of that I am certain.