{"id":2838,"date":"2016-01-24T08:41:11","date_gmt":"2016-01-24T13:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/2016\/01\/werent-even-trying\/"},"modified":"2016-01-24T08:41:11","modified_gmt":"2016-01-24T13:41:11","slug":"werent-even-trying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/2016\/01\/werent-even-trying\/","title":{"rendered":"Weren&#8217;t Even Trying"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Certainly in photography, and no doubt in many other creative fields as well, serendipity &#8212; the chance encounter of a telling result &#8212; can play an important role. For that to happen, though, the photographer (or artist) must be open to &quot;discovering&quot; something that one cannot actually search for.<\/p>\n<p>An interesting article in the NY TIMES talks about the relevance of serendipity to science, though the path is really the same for any creative enterprise:<\/p>\n<p><em>As people dredge the unknown, they are engaging in a highly creative act. What an inventor \u201cfinds\u201d is always an expression of him- or herself&#8230; One survey of patent holders found that an incredible 50 percent of patents resulted from what could be described as a serendipitous process. Thousands of survey respondents reported that their idea evolved when they were working on an unrelated project \u2014 and often when they weren\u2019t even trying to invent anything.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/01\/03\/opinion\/how-to-cultivate-the-art-of-serendipity.html?action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;clickSource=story-heading&amp;module=opinion-c-col-right-region&amp;region=opinion-c-col-right-region&amp;WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&amp;_r=0\">NY TIMES<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>&#0160;<\/p>\n<div class=\"tpad-img-center\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/6a01156f6c1fc1970b01b7c80be622970b-800wi\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"2301\" class=\"asset  asset-image at-xid-6a01156f6c1fc1970b01b7c80be622970b img-responsive\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/6a01156f6c1fc1970b01b7c80be622970b-500wi.jpg\" title=\"2301\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Certainly in photography, and no doubt in many other creative fields as well, serendipity &#8212; the chance encounter of a telling result &#8212; can play an important role. For that to happen, though, the photographer (or artist) must be open to &quot;discovering&quot; something that one cannot actually search for. An interesting article in the NY [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}