How I Nearly Ruined Photography For Myself
Roughly 3 years ago I found myself growing tired of photography.
I’d been immersed in the craft for a few years but wasn’t making any sort of progress (or at least, didn’t think I was).
Even if I had objectively gotten better, I didn’t feel the same sort of excitement and compulsion to create as I once had.
It felt like my motivation had dried up a little and everything I was doing was the same - even if it wasn’t.
Interestingly enough, I’d also felt myself burning out with YouTube.
I was going through the motions, struggling to get videos out on a weekly basis, and the energy just wasn’t there.
It was an uphill battle every single day.
Now I knew I wasn’t going to quit, but I needed to find a better way of doing things.
Thinking back on it now, the overarching problems stemmed from life itself and bled over into my creativity.
Photography wasn’t the reason life sucked.
Life was the reason everything else sucked.
And as I made changes in my life for the better, there was a big perspective shift I had that I believe saved my photography.
Today I’m going to share that with you.
When things are not what you thought they were.
The funny thing about many things in life are, things are not what they seem.
Donut holes aren’t actually holes, lead pencils are made of graphite, and apparently, the sky isn’t actually blue.
So even how you view and see photography might be different than how it actually is.
At least it was for me.
Some of the problems I had before were:
I paid too much attention to what others were doing and their metrics for “good photography”
I spent way too much time thinking about gear
I never took the time to ask what I was doing and what I wanted to do with photography
I was way too focused on trying to be “good”
Maybe this is just a process we have to go through.
We do stuff, get more experience, learn more stuff, and form new impressions of how things work.
And maybe I just wasn’t ready for that next level…yet.
The philosopher Phaedrus once said:
“Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden.”
Which is really just fancy for: don’t read a book by it’s cover.
Photography, art, and creativity are not what they seem.
And if you find yourself in a loop of doing the same things over and over again with no different result, maybe it’s time to adjust your strategy.
That’s the first step: realizing you’re doing something wrong.
Feelings of stagnation, waning interest, and even boredom are key clues here.
And admitting you might be going about this the wrong way can take some time and effort.
We as humans are quite stubborn, and don’t want to admit to the idea that we could be wrong.
So it’s a tough pill to swallow, but you gotta swallow it if you want to get to the next level.
The Obvious Truth
The great irony of life is that many of the answers we seek are often lying right in front of us.
They are not so “carefully hidden” as Phaedrus once suggested.
Rather they’re here, we just can’t see them, or we choose not to look.
Think about a time when you lost your phone or car keys.
You looked everywhere, turned up the whole house, only to find it somewhere stupid.
I did this once with my wallet.
I was visiting some relatives and thought I’d dropped or lost it somewhere.
I went through everything, we called restaurants, it was stressful.
And I couldn’t pay for anything during that time which made me feel bad.
To make things worse, I found it in the back of my laptop case on the very last day.
It showed up rather conveniently, as if I’d been faking it.
That’s my point.
Sometimes the very answers we seek are right in front of us - we’re just blind to it.
And they seem so obvious in hindsight.
Like “of course it was there”, or “how did I not notice?”
The same went for photography.
I was perhaps choosing not to look at the obvious answers because “it couldn’t be that, right?”
Let me give you some examples of what I had to change my mind about.
On the surface, improving your photography may require:
looking at what other people think are good photos, and imitating that
finding what cameras others use for the look you want, and using that
seeing what inspires other people to make their projects, and doing something similar
Reasonable, right?
Because in art we imitate and it’s important to learn and study others, especially those who’ve come before us.
This was wrong in my case.
My issue was, I had long passed the beginner stages of learning photography.
And the reason there was a wall in front of me was because I had reached a new level.
The source of my frustration was because I was taking people’s word for it, doing what everyone else was doing, without stopping to question if it aligned with what I wanted to do.
What I should’ve done was this:
Instead of paying attention to what other people were doing I had to focus on my own work.
Instead of spending all my time thinking about which gear would be better, I had to just go outside and take more photos.
Instead of fixating on becoming a “good photographer”, I had to not care about that and just focus on capturing the moment.
And instead of being in such a rush, I had to take a second to ask myself what I wanted to do with photography.
When those things, what I wanted to do and what I was doing, became aligned, it all got better.
These were the obvious truths that lay in front of me.
It sounds so clear in retrospect: match what you want to do and what you do and you’ll be happier.
But maybe I couldn’t see it because I couldn’t trust myself that I knew what I was doing with photography and with my life.
And so I did and sometimes still do, look to see if the world would approve of it before doing it.
If you find yourself in a similar position, ask yourself these questions:
What if what those people are saying isn’t true?
What if I could do this thing my way - and it worked?
What if I didn’t have to do this? What would I do instead?
Back to step one.
So what was the ultimate realization that saved my photography?
It’s a trite and obvious one, but often times profound life hacks are hidden within simple truths.
It’s that I could do every and any thing I wanted to with my photos.
That I could take photos of whatever subject matter I wanted to.
That what made a good or nice photo was up to me, not other people.
That my personal interests drove my actions which would then create the art.
And I needed to trust in that process, trust in my own intuition of what I wanted to take pictures of, and stop letting externalities drive my actions.
If I could do this, I’d be free to create whatever I wanted, be happy about what I created, and not let my emotions be dependent on outcomes or how something did.
For example, when creating a project like “The Sinking Sun”, I knew I wouldn’t sell tons of copies.
Not because I didn’t think it was good, but because selling a book is hard.
People don’t really care.
And to get others interested in your little niche photography book is even harder.
But to my surprise some of you did take interest, bought some copies, to which I’m eternally grateful for.
I do still have some available, on sale, if you’re interested.
We’re sold out of the pre-order benefits but you’ll still get all the print inclusions.
But the point is, making this book helped my photography tremendously.
It not only forced me to do something I hadn’t done before, but allowed me to test the theory I had.
The theory that being true to myself and making what I wanted to make regardless of how it might do or what others would think was the gateway past this barrier I was in front of.
Making this book confirmed that theory.
And that theory saved my photography because I hated the feeling of having to do something I didn’t want to do.
A good question to ask yourself is: if nothing else mattered, if everything you were worried about faded, what would you make?
If you didn’t care about how it performed, whether people liked it, and just stuck to your own interests, what would you do?
This was my answer.
I believe this is what leads to many artists creating their best work.
By not making what they’re expected to make but by following what their internal compass truly desires, and doing something with that.
It doesn’t always turn out to be some masterpiece, but it’ll push you in the right direction, and eventually you’ll make something awesome.
So whether I realized it or not, I had not given myself the full permission to do what I wanted with photography.
If something here is clicking for you, and you feel similarly, here’s that bit of permission I wish I gave myself sooner:
Make whatever you want, however you want.
Whatever you want to take pictures of, whatever you want to do with your pictures.
From street photography, to landscape photography, to just random photos of the sunset.
From making prints, to making zines, to simply scrapbooking.
Stop caring about what other people are doing, whether they’ll like your silly little project or not, or whether this idea you have will even be good.
This is your art, this is your life, and therefore your choice.
Go do it.
Alright, I hope something in here helped you out today…
If you want to build yourself a solid foundation with photography, check out Photography Essentials - it’s free.
If you want to help support me, there’s a little travel fundraiser on my website.
Or you can grab a copy of “The Sinking Sun”, my first photography zine, it’s on sale for a short time.
Thanks for reading, have a great day.
