No Glory Without the Grind: Wyoming lifestyle blogger and photographer

“Every failure is a step to success.”

About twenty years ago, I tried taking pictures at the time trials of the Brickyard 400 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Of the two rolls of film I shot, do you know how many cars I got in the frame? None. Zero. Zilch. Not one single car was completely in the frame, let alone actually recognizable as a NASCAR racer.

My photography skills have grown considerably since then but I still don’t nail every shot. Not even close. For every shot I save, I probably cull seven or eight, oftentimes many, many more. And when I try new things, they can be a big, fat, technical flop.

This image is a great example. I was working on panning, a technique where you purposefully slow down your shutter speed while tracking your subject through the frame to create a sense of motion. I wanted to convey the speed of our border collie at a dead run. The idea is that your subject is in focus and the background is blurred, conveying motion.

Except I didn’t quite get it right. Everything is blurred except Ziggy’s eyes. I actually kind of like this photo because of that because it fits his personality. The rest of his body is going all out but his eyes are laser-focused on his target, be they a six-year-old, pheasant chicks or a tennis ball.

But I had a vision in my head of what I wanted these images to look like and these just weren’t what I wanted, even for a practice session.

I could throw up my hands and declare “This panning business is just too hard.  I’ll stick with stopping the action. I know how to do that.”

Or I could say “I’m a terrible photographer.  I can’t get this right.  I should just quit.”

Or I could say “If I had a better camera, I could nail this shot.”

That’s what lots of people do.  They hit a stumbling block and they falter.  They blame their gear, they make excuses, they give up.  Not just photographers, but artists, athletes, scientists, you name it, people quit when things get hard.

What’s the fun in that?  I mean that.  What is the fun of getting something perfect the first time, every time?  There’s no growth, no challenge, no sense of accomplishment.

I’ve never been naturally talented at anything in my life.  Every success I’ve had has come from the grind.  Whether it was hours in barn practicing setting up and switching sides for horse showmanship or eight rewrites of a column for the Wyoming Game and Fish director’s office or 300 shots to get the one image I wanted.  My success comes in the trenches.  The failures.  The not quite rights.

If there is one thing I can teach other photographers, writers or my own daughter, it would be the power of grit…sustained perseverance and resilience through setbacks.  And the only way I know to develop real grit is through hours and hours of grunt work.

That grind is what separates champions from the people who just like winning, the novelists from the people with a good idea, professional photographers from the folks with nice cameras, the talkers from the do-ers.

The grind is where I learn and fail but I always, always grow.

So it’s back to that grind for me.  I’ll research what I did wrong, make adjustments and try again.  Eventually, I’ll nail this shot.  I’ll get a NASCAR car in the frame.  I’ll succeed because I know the glory starts with the grind.

–Teresa