I’m a Genius!

So, I was playing around on Stumble today and an article called Thinking like a Genius came up.  It turns out, I’m a genius!  Strategy number three of thinking like a genius says

Produce! A distinguishing characteristic of genius is productivity.  Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents.  He guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas.  In a study of 2,036 scientists throughout history, Dean Keith Simonton of the University of California at Davis found that the most respected scientists produced not only great works, but also many "bad" ones.  They weren’t afraid to fail, or to produce mediocre in order to arrive at excellence.

Well, that strategy has been working well for me.  I’ve been practicing and occasionally getting something good.  I have a whole lot of mediocre pictures and some bad ones that I can just delete.  Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself for not getting more great shots?  Is this a well kept secret that many successful professional photographers have?  Take a bunch and you’ll get a few? 

I think I’ll continue learning to take a technically good photograph, thereby lowering my number of mediocre shots and minimizing my bad ones.  Today I took 180 shots.  Upon reviewing them, I immediately eliminated about 40 of them.  About 40 more will be eliminated upon closer inspection.  Some of them were taken purely to capture the moment as a snapshot of my children in the moment – so those are okay.  I’ll keep them for what they are.  About 15 shots were made on a contrived practice set.  I spied a spider web outside my back door and I misted it with water attempting to capture a water-glistening-in-the-sun-on-a-spiderweb photo.  Didn’t turn out at all like what I was going for, but I’ll at least study them before I delete them.  About 50 more frames were shot trying to capture "snow" as my children call it… little bud leaves being blown down to earth from the huge trees above in our yard.  I don’t think you can see the "snow" in any of them. 

Will any of what remains turn out to be art?  Perhaps one or two.  But the genius in me says it’s okay if none do.  Tomorrow is another day to achieve excellence!  Just pick up the camera.

So there is a cropped portion of one of my spiderweb photos converted to black and white.  Does it speak to you?  Yeah…  me neither.