Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Learning by Failing

I know what many of my students don't: learning is a result of frustration and failure.

Witness the difference between yesterday's and today's photos.

Yesterday, I was so excited to find two damselflies mating that I forgot to pay attention to my camera and its settings. For half an hour, I watched and snapped, excited and certain I'd gotten a number of great shots. NOT! I was so excited by the damselflies that I forgot to check the settings and shot everything with the narrowest depth of field. The pictures are awful. DUH.

Today, I intentionally reminded myself to keep checking my settings. As a result, I got glorious photographs of damselflies, dragonflies, butterflies, and blooms.As painful as the lesson is, I'll probably suffer it several times over before what I've learned has become second-nature. That's fine by me: I still have the memory of what I've seen, of what I see.

Oh happy day!

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