Patience!

Two veteran National Geographic photographers explain why patience can pay off in photography.

It seems that good photography is almost entirely about patience of one kind or another. Consider the above image of the beautifully restored His Majesty's Theater in Perth, Australia. Cary tracked the light on the building for a couple of weeks waiting to see how closely he could get the reflections aligned window-to-window. When it finally happened, he had to just cool his heels until the woman in white came along. It took a tiny fraction of a second to make this photograph—and it took weeks.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to be patient, to stay with a situation and work it over. Things are always changing—your subject, the environment, your own thoughts about the image you’re making.

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