Being Fully Present by Mark Stone

November 2024. In February of 2022 my son Nathan (16 at the time) and I found ourselves in the Portland area for some hiking and biking. The weekend forecast called for unusually warm and dry weather. Nathan was about a year into getting really serious with photography, and eager for fresh opportunities.

Saturday morning we set out on the Tualatin River Greenway Trail. I was scanning the horizon, looking for that perfect vista photo that Nathan could take that encapsulated winter in the Pacific Northwest. I, however, am not a photographer. In contrast, Nathan focused on the details right in front of him. We walked a mile before he took any photos at all. He took a flurry of photos in the next half mile or so, and then, satisfied, he put his camera gear away, and we turned back towards the car.

"Dad, wait a minute." He stopped me on the trail, dug out his camera and lens again, and took one more photo. It isn't grand. It isn't sweeping. But this picture says Pacific Northwest winter in one shot as much as any I've ever seen.

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."

This Gretsky quote always troubled my math brain. You also make 100% of the shots don't take, because anything times zero equals zero. But Gretsky, like many great athletes, is also an artist. What if you hear the quote with an artist's voice, not an athlete's? What if it's equally something Ansel Adams would have said?

To a photographer, the opposite of missing a shot isn't taking a shot. It's discovering the shot. I think that's what Gretsky did too. To discover, you must be fully present.

Too often in our work we are "missing the shot", focused on the distance when the thing that will have impact is right in front of us. What we need is more discovery, not more shots. I'm grateful that I have my son to help teach me how to be fully present. The work is never done, and being fully present requires the best kind of work.

"It is an intuitive sense, an ability that comes from a lot of practice." -Ansel Adams

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