Oops, your intrepid iPhoneographer posted just the picture and forgot to write anything; if you visited earlier in the day, my apologies.  Shows you that even meticulous planning can go off the rails now and then.  Actually I make plenty of mistakes, and I would go so far as to say that I never learn much of anything until I DO make mistakes.  Perhaps I’m too lazy to learn otherwise, unless I make a mess of something which I need to then undo?  I am a lazy soul, which is why I work so hard all the time, to keep from going backwards.  Also, a former life as a musician taught me the discipline of daily forging-ahead.  If you want to improve, you must put in your time wood-shedding, which is what we’d call those tortuous hours in a practice room, deconstructing a piece of music until it was reduced to a movement of a finger from one key to another, supported by the breath in some subtle, repeatably way.

And thank goodness I don’t have to do that any more!  Photography is a lot of work, make no mistake, and the attempt to get better at it can be painful, emotional and time-consuming.  But make no mistake about this either:  nothing feels better than seeing your work pay off.  NOTHING.  The picture above makes me let out a long slow breath and just bask in the pleasure of seeing something come out exactly the way I intended.