A Reminder on Patience

One of the greatest challenges I face in teaching is getting the practice of patience across. The concept is easy, it’s getting students to actually practice patience that I haven’t mastered yet.

And, in photography, photojournalism and journalism, patience is an essential skill. And I choose the word skill specifically – it is not a naturally occurring habit. It takes time to develop it, to know when to employ it, to know how to take advantage of it.

Over at The New York Times’ Lens blog, Jonathan Blaustein has a post up about Ray K Metzker, a modernist photographer whose work screams patience.

A photograph may only represent 1/500th of a second – but it can take hours for that right 1/500th of a second to happen.