Missed the Cut

I’ve missed blogging. I’ve missed making the time to write regularly and to share thoughts that perhaps resonate with someone else and start a conversation. As a result, I’m going to try to resurrect my blog. I’m not quite certain yet how often I’ll write or what I’ll write about — though there will be lots about photography and fiber and nature and topics that pique my curiosity — but I will write.

Since I’m jumpstarting this, I figured I might as well start with seomthing a little bit hard. Yesterday, on social media, I declared “Oops Tuesday” or #toopsday because I’m going to try to be brave enough to share photos that wouldn’t otherwise make the cut.

Why?

I think it’s important to embrace our mistakes, our not-so-perfects. To keep it real. I’m going to try to reflect on why something didn’t work out right . To try to embrace the moments, the effort and the learning curve. So let’s start with this image. It’s a picture of Grizzly 793 (aka Blondie) and her two cubs. It’s not the worst picture ever, but her head is down and her cubs are mostly hidden. But here’s the context: I’m keeping this picture because it’s one of the first I have of her. I was so excited to just see a grizzly sow and cubs that I didn’t care what the photo looked like, so long as you could tell it was a Grizzly mama and cubs. (We hadn’t seen any the year before.) I had no way of knowing then that Blondie would give us more opportunities to get pictures of the trio. This sighting was also poignant since none of Blondie’s cubs had survived the previous year and, until the weekend I took this picture, no one had seen her. There was a bit of celebration to see her with two healthy cubs.

Lessons learned: It IS important to memorialize a special moment or encounter, even if the angle’s not right. But restraint is a good thing. It really isn’t fun to have to go back and delete repeated shots (hundreds of them, gulp!) of the same furry back. That said, taking enough shots to learn is a good thing to develop a style. (Delete, delete, delete and oh, look at that one! That’s interesting.) And heck, it’ll be a good reminder that nature and wildlife photography can be hard.