Lesson 37. Moments: Patience
“Why is patience so important?”
“Because it makes us pay attention.”
–Paulo Coelho
I am not the most patient man on the planet. In fact I’m known for the opposite. My belief that life is short, coupled with a sense of urgency to cram it all in, and the knowledge that if I don’t do the things I want, no one will do them for me, makes me deeply impatient. So when I tell you patience is more important to a photographer than half the nonsense we spend our time on, it’s not because I find it easy or have a particular knack for it. It’s because, pragmatically, I’ve found it to be true. On safari in Kenya I’ve watched time and time again as people have become impatient, put their cameras away, and given up. I tell them not to. I tell them to wait it out. They don’t. And that, inevitably, is when the magic happens. It’s the same thing with portraits. Unless you’re patient and wait for the moment, you’ll have given up before it comes. The smile, the unexpected gesture, the one look that reveals your subject in a way that all the clever posing guides can never anticipate.
Your need to make a photograph and life’s need for certain things to happen in sequence are notorious for lining up a little out of sync, and the sooner you get used to it the better. We all need to slow down a little, and I’ll talk about that toward the end of this book. But that’s just part of it; slowing down is not the same as being patient. Slowing down is about the pace of what we do, whereas being patient is about how long we’re willing to pace ourselves. It’s about waiting.
Nikon D3s, 70mm, 1/250 @ f/5.6, ISO 400
Grizzlies in the Khutzeymateen, British Columbia, 2013. I waited a long time for the bears to get comfortable with us but was eventually rewarded with this scene. Had we pulled out and moved on, we’d never have seen scenes like this.
We like the spontaneity of photography, and when the moment finally happens we need to be ready for it. I’m all for being spontaneous. But these moments do not come at our bidding. Without waiting we will see fewer and fewer of them, unwilling to put in the time, unaware that the waiting is what it takes because these moments are rarer than we like to think—at least the truly great ones are.
“Being patient is about how long we’re willing to pace ourselves. It’s about waiting.”
Patience is needed not only as we wait longer than we thought we’d have to for a great moment, but in bigger ways. We need patience as we work toward that moment when we finally stop thinking so consciously about exposure or composition and it all begins to feel a little more natural—that moment when, for the first time, we feel we might be getting somewhere with this craft and art. For that moment when our work begins to truly feel like our own and not just exercises in imitation of others, helpful as they’ve been. For the dry period to be over. For that moment when you move beyond the plateau. If you thought waiting for the UPS driver to come with your B&H order was tough, then, baby, you’re in for a shock. But patience is what will keep you from giving up, from chasing shortcuts, from getting so paralyzed by your disappointment or fear that you can’t do anything but make the same photograph over and over again. Patience with your scene, the light, the people you work with, and most of all yourself and the creative process that’s uniquely yours, imperfect, and tormentingly slow. Do what you can to seek it out, grab it by the tail, and hang on tenaciously. Don’t be passive. But don’t for a moment think that your tenacity means things will just roll over and play nice. You’ll still have to wait it out. But do. Patience, said Aristotle, is bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
Nikon D3s, 140mm, 1/80 @ f/7.1, ISO 1600
Khutzeymateen, British Columbia, Canada.