Sometimes it feels like everything is going right. The light is perfect, your framing is inspired, and you're getting great shot after great shot. And other times nothing works; everything you touch turns to crap.
And sometimes you shoot an entire roll of film and only get one good photo.
I think it's this situation--one gem out of a bunch of dirt clods--that is sometimes the most perplexing. It makes you wonder if that one great photo wasn't just pure luck. Clearly you weren't doing anything right the rest of the roll; why should you suddenly remember how not to suck? No, you think, must have been luck.
I don't think it's ever that absolute though. Matters of creativity are complicated. Maybe it was just a matter of the right factors coming in to play at the right time. Maybe all your other pictures were terrible because your rhythm wasn't right, or because you were working as if the conditions were different. Or maybe it is just luck sometimes, and maybe luck is what makes--forgive me--art. At least sometimes.
That's not the lesson I think I should take from this, though. I think the important thing for me to take away is that even on your bad days you're capable of doing something good. You just gotta keep going. Because you never know--maybe that next photo will be the one good one.
My sister came in to visit this weekend and I took an entire roll of film at lunch. This is the only one that was any good. But I like it so much that I'm perfectly fine with it.
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