Capturing Chance: The Role of Luck in Iconic Photography
In February of 2020, just before the world shut down, my husband and I played hooky on a Friday afternoon, which happened to be Valentine’s Day. We really weren’t looking to celebrate the capital-D Day, just to celebrate a day in general. It was cold, but it was clear, and the beach was all but deserted. Gulf Shores, Alabama has a sort of inlet west of the main set of beach entrances that leads to the lagoon, and it was along that inlet where we parked. We spent several hours walking along the sand, looking at the birds, watching waves, and observing the tidal movement along the pilings.
I love the beach any time of the year and any time of day. I love watching the pelicans and seagulls. I love watching the waves and the swells. I love watching people having fun, though there weren’t very many that day. Those that were there were doing interesting things – fishing, shell gathering, picnicking, but not swimming. Remember, it was February. Even along the Gulf of Mexico in Alabama, February is too cold for swimming. Normally, I step into the surf to get the wave shots I want, but that wasn’t going to happen that day. I did spend probably an hour watching the waves from the shore, trying to grab that elusive shot of the wave just at crest. I really wasn’t even aware of how low the sun was moving in the sky toward the horizon. I just kept snapping.
When it’s cold and you’re on the verge of losing any light, you snap away and look at them later. Digital cameras have removed all consequences of taking a lot of bad shots to get one good one, so I do just that – I snap away and look at them later. And so, it was only in the car on the way home after getting dinner that I found this shot. Gorgeous, isn’t it? Pure luck. Sometimes your favorite shot is just pure luck.
WHAT PART DOES LUCK PLAY?
Let me be clear, luck won’t replace good composition or good exposure. That image of the wave was well composed, and the exposure settings were right for the conditions. It would have been a good photo without the fiery touch of sunlight dancing along the crest. The luck comes in with the sun hitting the wave at the perfect point of crest and my shutter opening at exactly the right time to capture it. Sometimes luck is being in the right place at the right time to find something extraordinary, like Steve McCurry’s image of the Afghan girl with the captivating green eyes from the cover of the June 1985 issue of National Geographic magazine. McCurry was visiting a refugee camp and happened to walk past a tent that was being used as a school and noticed the girl. There were countless tents in that camp, but those green eyes are rare among Afghans. The probability of McCurry not only walking past that tent, but spotting one person with those striking eyes was incredibly low. It can be called divine inspiration, fate, or just something random, but all of those descriptions fall under what I call “luck,” that final element that we hope is ours after we’ve done all the work of composition and setting up the camera for the conditions.
LUCK FAVORS THE PREPARED
We can sort of invite luck by making things favorable for luck. It’s not easy. It requires knowing the different things that can happen, and deciding which of those things you’d like to have happen, and knowing which ones you’d like to not have happen. It’s always going to be easier to carry one camera and one lens and shooting on Automatic all the time. You may still get some lucky shots, I’ve done it. (I have a shot of a buck doing his business among the weeds up in Cades Cove. I’ve never printed it or shown it to anyone, but I have it. Don’t know why, I just thought it was a funny thing to shoot.) However, you will find that your luck increases as you understand more about how your camera works. Your luck increases further as you understand light and how your camera captures and uses it. Your luck increases with knowing which lens to use at which time for what sort of shot you want. Your luck will increase in direct proportion to the amount of work you’re willing to put into it.
LUCK OR SKILL?
I love learning something new or learning something better. I can often go through my images and determine when I had learned about a particular technique, because I’ll have several days’ worth of shots making use of that technique. Learning and studying technique is a good thing, but it can cause me to become blind to luck while I concentrate on improving my skill. It’s a personal shortcoming, but fortunately, it only lasts a little while, until I get really comfortable with that new technique and I can use it without having to put a lot of thought and effort into it.
It’s tempting to want to only practice a new technique at home in familiar, boring surroundings, where you aren’t distracted by something beautiful or interesting. The problem with that, though, is that it can leave you unprepared to use that new technique when you are in an environment with something beautiful or interesting. You need to spend time in a lot of different places playing with your new skill, so that it becomes more automatic, you can move to the settings quickly without having to put a lot of thought into the shot. When that event or scent emerges, luck will be on your side.
YOUR TURN
When have you had a stroke of photographic luck? Now that you’ve read this, what are you inspired to do so that you can increase your luck? I’m taking an iPhone photography course so that I can take better advantage of lucky situations with the camera I have with me most often. How about you? Drop a comment below.
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