Hunting Your Snark

(Why Wordsworth Would make a lousy photographer)

 

I  Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

 

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

 

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

 

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

 

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

 

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We’ve all picked up our cameras and gone “wandering lonely as a cloud” in the hope of stumbling across a potential killer shot.  Let’s face it, it rarely produces that kind of shot.  In fact it’s  probably one of the best ways to NOT get  that killer shot. 

What do I mean by this?  Well, great photographs are rarely, if ever stumbled upon by accident.  If we are honest,  we surely can’t believe that our best chance of getting that WOW image is just  a product of some happy accident.  If it’s  down to nothing more than chance, then there are a handful of  exceptional photographers who are consistently very lucky indeed, enough luck, it appears, to guarantee that they should easily be able to pick the winning lottery numbers on a weekly basis.  

 

Of course, when you put it this way, it seems ridiculous to believe that great photographers have way more luck than the rest of us.    

 

I suspect they don’t just “wander lonely as a cloud, floating on high o’er vales and hills” just hoping and praying to accidentally come upon a host of golden daffodils that they will capture in a stunning composition.  If that was their approach to photography thay would produce far fewer exceptional images.

 

So if merely wandering around and hoping for a chane discovery is not the answer, what is? 

Wordsworth gave us a clue in the later  verses of the poem.

 

“I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:”

 

It is  only much later,  while lying on his couch in “blissful solitude” that he begins to appreciate the “wealth” of what he had seen. 

 

It’s not uncommon for us to fail to notice the potential for a great photograph.  We glance at things rather than really look.   We wander around , and our eyes are pulled in every direction because we have no particular purpose in mind:  we are wandering and wondering without knowing what we are looking for.  We should rather be hunting for a specific prey. 

 

It’s only when we have it clear in our mind, just what it is that we are seeking, will we begin to increase our chances of seeing it. 

 

We have to work hard to find the shot that WOWS. 

 We need to search with every tool at our disposal  to find the shot we have in mind.  We need to be like  the ten men hunting the snark in Lewis Caroll’s epic  poem:

 

“They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;

They pursued it with forks and hope;

They threatened its life with a railway-share;”

They charmed it with smiles and soap

  You don’t need to be clever or posses a substantial IQ to be a great photographer - you just need to focus your brain.  It’s remarkable how quickly your brain can lock onto things, things such as patterns, shapes and specific types of object.  Just consider what happens when you buy a new car;  without trying you begin to notice all the  instances of that model that cross your path. You never noticed them before.  What you did by focusing on your new car, was to you trigger  you brain to lock onto the idea of the make and model. 

 

Imagine how this will work if you can deliberately trigger your brain into lo locking  on to a specific object, shape, color or pattern.

 

Its not difficult.  You just need to imagine that you are hunting the  snark rather than just aimlessly wandering,  like Wordsworth. 

 

Your “snark” can be anything, but its best to start simple with easily identifiable things, such as a single color or a compositional building block such as diagonal lines.

 

 Alternatively you can pick  simple objects like a  window, door or fences.  You simply head outside with your camera and focus on your chosen “snark”. And hunt it to the exclusion of everything else.

 

 You’ll be amazed at how swiftly your brain locks on to your “snark” and you begin to find them everywhere.   I guarantee  that if you adopt this approach you will begin to massively improve the  rate at which you discover potential WOW shots.

 

You can improve your success  rate even more, by focusing on a single “snark” for an extended period of time, such as a month or even longer!