The perfect shot

This is poached from another blog of mine, but something that just popped into my head today:

There is a picture in our minds of this thing – a thing that happens or will happen. We see it with absolute clarity. It is definitive. It is the shot we’ve been waiting for, and it will be perfect. Except that it won’t. Because the perfect shot won’t be one we visualize ahead of time. It’s the one we will find. It is better than what we can visualize, because what we are able to construct in our minds is no match for the unfettered chaos that the world hands to us. It is better than what we can visualize, because it takes the brutal construct of mismatched and unrelated existence, and it turns it into beauty. The real stuff. Not the manufactured, syrupy, synthetic, caffeinated, sugar-free, low-calorie, off-the-shelf type of beauty that we find for cheap sitting in a rack at the grocery store. But the real stuff.

Every great shot has an element of surprise. It catches us off guard. The trick is not trying to control and predict it. The trick is to be ready for it when it happens. It is to push and prod to evoke it. It is to step into it and find it. But photography is a medium of the real. It is grounded, or at least connected, to the physical world. The idea that capturing something random is inferior to the preconceived is a fanciful myth.

Great photographers react to the random chaos in the world. They suck it in, adapt to it, adopt it, and make it their own. Don’t be anchored by your imagination when taking pictures. That will produce mediocrity. Use your imagination to see more deeply into everything that sits right in front of your eyes. That will be the perfect shot.