WE ARE ALL STUDENTS

The other day, while thumbing through some coffee table books, Cathy and I both came down with case of ‘big-head-itis’. The books featured photos by some of the giants in nature photography, Art Wolfe and Franz Lanting to name a few. Unbelievably, we had images that were stronger than many of theirs! Of course, the books were ten or fifteen years old. When we compared our work with more recent photos by the same photographers, we were cured. It was no longer a problem getting our heads through the doorways in our townhouse. As frustrating as it may be to those of us trying to compete with them, the best are still getting better. In fact, all of us are either learning, or we’re getting passed by.

Luckily, Cathy and I are also still learning and stretching our horizons. The old saying about teaching an old dog new tricks is not necessarily true. And when we look at our material from ten years ago, or even a few years ago for that matter, it suffers when we compare it to our most recent images. The down side to accumulating all of this new knowledge is that we have to keep returning to places we thought we had already covered well.

Between new techniques, improvements in old techniques, and new equipment (not to mention changes in the local conditions), we never tire of visiting the same old places. When revisiting these locations, we always shoot more film than we thought we would, for there are always more new things to try than we allowed for. There’s something new to try every year, even at sites where we’ve shot hundreds and hundreds of rolls of film, like Arches National Park and Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge.

True, the new techniques don’t always work out. When they do work out though, it makes all the experimentation worthwhile. National Geographic Photographer, Chris Johns, said, "If every picture on your roll is perfect, then you’ve failed." It’s pretty obvious to anyone looking in our trash that Cathy and I try to live by this philosophy. And we encourage each of you to waste a few shots of your own this summer in the pursuit of creativity.