The thing with great photography — or more precisely, what I know of great photography (which is to say, not much), is that it’s so hard to predict when you’re going to take the picture.

You know, The Picture that you see hanging in white, minimalistic, art galleries in New York’s Upper East Side.

The Picture that makes magazine covers in National Geographic or Time.

The Picture that makes women everywhere simultaneously moan with orgasmic pleasure and sense a sudden, animal attraction to its creator.

Uh…yeah, that one.

Last Saturday, I went for a photography walk-around with a few other photographers. The conditions were great (though perhaps a little too sunny), and I ended up taking about a hundred shots. Of those hundred, I was initially happy with half a dozen.

But having arrived home and popped them through my computer, my heart fell as I realized none of them were The Picture.

Sure, some of them were pretty. Some had nice colour and nice character. But none of them were amazing. None of them, jaw-dropping, mind-blowing, holy-fuck-I-want-your-babies amazing.

I could see little imperfections in each one: This one was badly composed, that one didn’t capture the right dynamic lighting, this one had distracting clouds…and so on and so forth.

Statistically, I’ve taken about 5500 pictures in my photography-interested lifetime. Of those 5500, about 200 were worth a closer look. Then of those 200, about 15 were worth using as wallpaper on someone’s desktop. And of those 15, maybe, maybe 5 I’d consider one day getting framed. You know, to be hung on my distant cousin’s dark and moldy basement wall.

Let’s be honest, 1/1000 is a pretty horrific ratio.

But the thing is, I realized today that maybe — maybe that perfect shot doesn’t happen until your 10,000 shot. Or hell, maybe it doesn’t happen until your 20,000th.

But somewhere, somewhere out there in our big ol’ world, is my Perfect shot.

It exists. And statistically, it’s bound to happen.

I just have to keep clicking.