W. Edwards Deming was talking about manufacturing when he said it. I think about that line every time I’m out there with a camera: a process cannot be understood by stopping.

The first hour in the desert is always wasted. You show up, see the obvious shot, take it, and it looks like every other photo of that dune anyone’s ever taken. The good stuff doesn’t show up until you’ve been standing there long enough to stop looking for it.

I’ve learned to treat the first hour as the toll you pay to get in. Walk without the camera up. Let the heat do what heat does. Somewhere around hour two the desert stops performing for you and starts just being itself- a broken track, a line in the sand that wasn’t there yesterday, the sound dropping out entirely once you’re far enough from the road.

None of that shows up on a schedule. It shows up once you’ve stopped trying to finish and started just staying.

That’s the whole method, if I have one. Don’t stop early.