Photography and Luck

Even before I started my website and my blog I wanted to write about this at some point. It's clear to me that this may be a vague statement and will never be explained to the point of full understanding. Nevertheless I want to give my opinion and experience to the topic.

Of course it’s all luck.

– Henri Cartier-Bresson

One of most important quotes in photography if you ask me. So much in photography comes down to luck.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that any great photographer out there is just great because of luck. Of course there is things like practice, persistence, hard work, knowing how to handle your gear when you are right there in the perfect moment.

But that's already one thing. Getting that perfect moment to happen. How many times have I been to places where amazing photos have been taken or could have been, but then it was raining, the light was harsh or not in the right spot or you had people run in front of your camera for that perfect shot. Sure some of these things can be handled with right preparation (lighting, rain I.e.) or persistence (just coming back to that place until the photo will work out), but honestly for most people and I'm sure a lot of upcoming photographers can relate to this, it's just not possible to visit a great place a couple times. I was able to afford going to the Grand Canyon once. Same thing happen with Crater Lake that we've been to on a road trip. It's just not possible staying in one place for many days when you need to move on or get back to a regular day job.

And now I can already hear the voices going you don't need to go far to take great picture but really who cares about a photo of my local burger shack even when it is technically perfect and has an incredible composition. Unless you are lucky and the right person on Instagram owning a page like @igworldclub or similar loves it and decides to share it. Then a couple people will like your photo, maybe you'll be able to get to the next benchmark you set for your followers-number and you'll get a dopamine shot and everything starts all over again.

Take the two shots above. The amount of luck that had to come together to make two of my favorite images possible is not even scaleable. First was shot in New York City on a late night after shooting sunset on Manhattan Bridge. It was my last night in NY and after I was done and heading to my Air BNB I was going through the list in my head of places I wanted to visit. One spot I hadn't ticked off yet was Grand Central Station. It was more or less on my way home so I was debating with myself wether to go or not. A couple minutes later I was walking around the building trying different compositions when I ended up strolling along the bridge up to the passenger drop-off at the Station. Turns out the bridge was closed for cars due to ongoing construction under the bridge, but it was completly open for pedestrians (apart from the fact that this is not a pedestrian bridge at all but it was just blocked with a truck on the oncoming lane so you had about 30ft of space to walk past that truck). I could have spent all night up there all by myself. It was the least crowded place I found in New York in all my four days being there, right there in the heart of Manhattan, on my birthday, at 12.30am.

The second photograph was taken at Marshalls Beach in San Francisco, CA. By the time I was in the Bay Area I was originally planing on being in Yosemite NP. Not saying that that would've been a photo location any worse. On top of that I have been visiting the same beach two days before and was not even planing on going back, but since I had no other plans for that evening I decided to go again.

Imagine all these random factors coming together to make these photographs happen. This is what I love so much about photography. Capture the moment when "the stars align" so to say. But saying that photography is all about the person behind the camera and does not come down to luck and the infinite randomness of the universe is just ridiculous.

Rant over! Enjoy some of my lucky shots and your Sunday Afternoon. Please leave some comments below on how you think about this! :)