Getting Lost In My Hometown – Experimentation And PhotographyMarch 30, 2012

"You'll always miss 100% of the shots you don't take."

--Wayne Gretzky

I'm not from this area originally, but I've lived in the DC area since 1997.  I've lived in Howard County Maryland since 2006 or so, and Maryland since 2002-ish.

I mention my residential history as relevant because I've been lost while driving somewhere at least 3 times in the last two weeks.

Why have I been lost?  Because I've been trying new things, taking new routes, pushing the limits of my knowledge of the area.  I've been going places I've been a hundred times before but in new ways.

I have seen several new neighborhoods I didn't even know existed, and seen neighborhoods I knew existed but haven't been through in years.

It takes a little longer when you get lost, and sometimes you have to turn around and go backwards to get there.  But it is extremely important to get lost once in a while.

You might ask yourself:  why is she writing about this on a photography blog?

Because it's important to try new things in life as much as in photography (life imitates art, after all! or is it the other way around?).

It is vitally important to experiment.  To play.  To see things in new ways.  To get lost once in a while.  To take a chance. To take risks.

When we photograph, we aren't just trying to get traditional shots with expected results, we also want to -- at some point in every session or every day -- try something new.  We should be experimenting and pushing the limits because when it works, it really works.  Sure, it might not work, but we have to still try.  Fear of failure or disappointment only holds us back.

To paraphrase The Great One (see quote above), you might miss most of the time when you experiment, but you'll never succeed if you don't try.

When we try new things in photography, sometimes they don't work, but we must acknowledge and accept that it's always worth trying.  Even if we fail, we still learn and grow from the experience.

And sometimes we end up with fantastic, unbelievably good results.