Well I did it, I went back out and tried my Midnight Photography again, and came back with some alright images. The night before Thanksgiving, I drove to old downtown Arlington, and walked around to see if I could find anything of interest. I snagged a couple shots of familiarity, and a couple new compositions I hadn’t seen before. From buildings to objects to spiderwebs, I walked around for a little over 2hrs, coming away with about 30 “keepers”. Ultimately though, I still couldn’t find my groove, or catch much that interested me.
While I was out I felt optimistic, but quickly that optimism died off, leaving me doubting my abilities as a photographer. Just before getting back to my car, I spotted a couple spider webs, dew from the cold fog that’d enveloped the small town glistened off of each thread in the overhead lights of a nearby building. I thought they looked equally haunting and beautiful, and thought they’d make for a cool photo. So I tossed my lens into Manual Focus, and started to get into my Photographer Yoga poses, squatting and moving side to side. I think I spent 20 minutes alone just trying to get the best shots I could.
The next day I started going through the photos, one by one marking them as 1, 3, or 5 star photos like I normally do. After finding my “keepers” I went down the road of editing, finding that I liked a certain preset to use for damn near all of the photos. I stopped to grab something to eat, and realized that the sunset was absolutely stunning, so I ran back to the office, grabbed my gear, and shot out of the house to see if I could snag a shot of the mountain range from my favorite spot in Marysville. By the time I got close to the spot though, I realized I was just minutes too late, and I’d end up with too different of a photo than what I wanted. So I looped around to a backroad and headed back home, only to glance to my right and see that “The Mountain is out”. This phrase refers to Mt.Rainier here in Washington State, and it’s usually said by people that live way up North of Seattle, as the atmosphere needs to be clear enough to see the majestic mountain. With only minutes to full sunset, I found a parking spot, grabbed my tripod, and hoofed it to a spot on the backroad to see the mountain the best. Setting up my gear along the way, I got to a spot and started adjusting my settings (f22, 1/20th of a second, ISO-100) and then I spotted something. “FUCK!! There’s dust on my sensor”, and of course in a rush to get out the house I forgot to grab my cleaning gear, ugh what the hell another fail. Yeah I probably could of adjusted my settings so the dust wasn’t in the photo, but at this point I felt so damn defeated I said “whatever, I’ll see what I can do in editing”.
By the time I got home, I’d felt pretty much like the worst photographer in the world, and didn’t even bother to upload the photos from my camera to my computer. Instead, I just put my camera in my office and say “Fuck it” for the night. After taking the night off from photography, I woke up the next day still bummed about not really getting many images two nights ago, and then missing the sunset and having a dusty sensor the next day. But I wasn’t going to let it make me give up, I knew a dirty sensor could be cleaned, and remembered how many times I went out and came back with absolutely nothing when I first started doing Midnight photography, so I went back into my office and got to work.
After a little time in my office, I came back out and realized that the sunset was looking just as good, and this time I was an hour earlier. BOOM, I was off once again with camera in hand (this time clean), making it to my favorite spot just in time to compose one panoramic shot. I DID IT, I got my shot I wanted, and I also realized I could see Mt.Rainier from this spot too, so I set everything up and got another chance at it (still a little too far into sunset than I would’ve liked, but I still felt good with).
Now, I don’t think I’m at any level of “great images”, but having small victories is better than none at all, and honestly if I like my photos that’s all that matters, photography (for the most part) is subjective as hell. So if you like the photos I take, great, and if you don’t like the photos I take, great go capture your own. I also say for the most part, because I work for a magazine, so I also take pride in making sure that the photos I capture for them are to Their liking, and if they’re not I make it right in one way or another.
Before I start rambling, I just want to say that we all get “stuck” sometimes, and that’s ok. If you’re struggling with what you’re doing right now, know that it won’t last forever, sometimes you just need to be a habitual failure. But the biggest thing is don’t give up, be a habitual “get back up and get back at it” as well.
Hope you have a great week, and I’ll catch y’all later.
