There are times in a photographer's life when he will step back and really look at a picture, coming to the shocking (in both a horrifying and beautiful way) realisation that he will never take a photo as great as that ONE ever again, ever in his life. Usually, he is wrong. Usually, there comes a point when another perfect moment is caputured and he steps back again and has the realisation all over with that new picture. Sometimes, though, the first time that happens is it. Sometimes, he will go his whole life trying to match that, always failing.
For me, I've had a few of those. This photo, below, is the third time in five years of photography that I've felt that sinking feeling, that illness in my stomach, the worry that I'll never take a picture quite as good. That everything will be a hair shy of that great, that they will all fall short. And it's not just illness that I feel. It's exhileration, as well. It's beauty and art and anxiety, and a drive to be better, to do better. It's success and failure at the same time. Success that I've done it: I've caught a moment of time in a still picture, taken a piece of perfection and locked it up forever to be safe and beautiful. It doesn't matter if the world likes it. It doesn't matter if they hate it. It exists for me, and that is sufficient. Oh, but the failure! To be twenty-three years old and have that sinking feeling that I'll never take a better picture. For that to be my peak... It's a terrifying thought that I could fail in such a way. I become filled with a hunger to do better. With a need to find a new way to show the world how I see it. It's a precious, invaluable, incomparable moment. It changes everything.
