I seem to be developing a fascination for chess. It’s an interesting game that you can never master fully during one lifetime, with a long and rich history (did you know that chess played a part in the Cold War, when Soviet and American players competed for the World Championship?). Like many of my fellow countrymen I have caught the chess bug because of Magnus Carlsen, Norwegian 24-year old chess player extraordinaire and current world champion. When he plays in big chess tournaments, the mainstream tv channels cover each of his games in hours-long live broadcasts, and chess boards sell out across the country. Being perhaps somewhat starved for intellectual challenges now that I am home on maternity leave (and with less time than ever to pursue hobbies!), it was perhaps inevitable that I caught the bug too.

So why write about chess on a photography site? I have found – somewhat to my surprise – that these hobbies of mine have something in common. Whether on the chessboard or through the viewfinder, you need the ability to see the whole picture.

Say that you move your castle in preparation for an attack on your opponent’s king. If you fail to notice that one of your opponent’s pieces is threatening the square on which your castle landed, you will most likely lose the castle when it’s your opponent’s turn next. Similarly, failing to notice all the elements in the viewfinder will make you lose the image you saw in your mind. This happened to me with the image below – I was so concerned with the cute pair of flowers that I completely overlooked that pesky piece of straw.

The only solution I have to avoid these situations, in photography and in chess, is as simple as it is mundane: practice. Towards that end, I have a chess app on my phone for easy access when the baby is asleep and take the dSLR along when I take the baby out in the pram. I don’t get to use either as much as I would like (there is just so much to do when the baby is asleep!), but that’s okay, since while they say that practice makes perfect, perfection is inobtainable in both chess and photography, and isn’t that a great thing indeed.

-Jenny