What Can We Learn From People Who Photograph Lightning For A Living?

I was just watching a program on TV, and there was a fellow on there who makes his living photographing lightning.

He follows thunderstorms around the country, sets up his cameras about ten miles from the storm and waits.

His camera is set up on a tripod, and he has a hand-held switch that he pushes when he wants to snap the picture. When he snaps the picture, it will automatically takes 10 pictures in sequence, then he will need to push the button again.

He uses film as opposed to digital cameras, because film and lenses still produce better pictures than computer chips.

It is a tough job, because he has to estimate where the next lightning strike will appear in the sky, and set his camera to catch that shot. Then he has to push the button a split-second before the lightning came down from the sky, since the average lightning strike will remain in the sky for only a fraction of a second.

The challenge was to have the camera pointing the right direction at the right time, and to push the button exactly when he needed to push it.

Since he was shooting lightning on film, he never knew if he got the shot, until after he got the film processed.

So, immediate gratification is not part of his work cycle.

He may go out in the field 7 days each week during the spring and summer.

He spends hours in the field preparing and trying to get the job done.

Yet, he is lucky if he is able to capture 1-2 lightning strikes a week.

And even when he captures the shot, it may not be a good enough shot for him to sell his lightning strike photo.

He considers his lightning strike photos to be a kind of "art", and he sells professional prints of his photos to people who want to add them as "wall art" in their home or office.

He may shoot 2,000 pictures in one storm or 2,000 pictures in one week.

He stands outside for days at a time doing his work, then he pays someone to process his film.

And yet, even when he only captures 1-2 pictures a week and possibly 1-2 prints a month worth selling, he keeps investing the money in failure until he achieves success.

This fellow fails more often than Thomas Edison did when he was inventing the light bulb. (The rumor is that Edison proved 1,000 methods of how not to make a light bulb, until he found the way that he should make a light bulb.)

Edison failed 1,000 times before finding success. And this fellow typically fails many thousands of times before finding success.

I wonder how many IMers would be willing to fail twice or hundred times before quitting?

An old man once told me that in order to find success, one must be willing to fail until success finally arrives.

But, maybe I should not have listened to that old man, because his idea of success was picking out the right dog food for dinner. :p

LOL