Sometimes it’s easy, like a lightning strike, you just get it.
Often I don't get it, but I keep trying though.
Trying is all you can do. Keep trying and you’ll avoid failure.
I had less than 12 hours to make an image out of an assignment about the law firm billing model--the billable hour. I could have just opted for a stock image of money. I had an idea and not being sure how to execute it, I could of very easily fallen back on a plain, but yet perfectly acceptable photograph from a readily accessible image archive. Instead I started to plan my idea out. I’ll get the hook from somewhere near my house. I asked one of the more flush looking editors to get me a crisp $100 bill from the bank. He looked at me like I was running a hustle, but shrugged as if to say “I know where you work.”
I got up early and hit the hardware store. FAILURE. Even though the store is near the ocean and the pier where people fish on a daily basis they didn’t carry any “tackle,” that’s what the shopkeeper with the three Yorkies told me. One of them was sniffing my pants leg as I turned to leave. I then realized that I should have gone to the Sports Authority, but when I showed up they wouldn’t be open for another hour.
I experiment shooting a one dollar bill tapped to a light table lit by a single strobe. I am able to shoot this successfully and then proceed to rig up the hook and photograph it separately. Next the line and the 100 bill are shot. I puncture the one dollar bill with the hook and shoot that as well. I take the four images to the computer and start. I clip them out, rotate and drag and drop. A few clicks here and there and it's finished.
It was a lot like something I saw on the NYT a few weeks earlier and after the day was done I knew that I had exactly the same experience this photographer had in 2,500 miles away when he photographed his exploding pie. Sometimes you don’t know what your doing and win or lose the best thing you can do is try.
