Today I was pointed towards this article by Merlin Mann titled ‘Photography, and the Tolerance for Courageous Sucking’. See, lately I’ve been feeling kind of down because I don’t drag my camera everywhere, and I don’t take a thousand pictures every month, and it makes me wonder if I’ve started to lose interest in photography as a whole.
And then I get a chance to read an article by a guy who is going through everything I went through – that confusion, that feeling of not understand what’s going on inside the equipment, that desire to take pictures every single day knowing darn well that the vast majority – if not all of them – are going to be worthless, and those moments of crazy elation when you get that burst of inspiration and try something a new way, or approach the problem from a new angle (no slight photography pun or article content reference intended).
Reading his thoughts, laid out much better than I could have said or done when I was in that same place, made me realize that I’m not taking a thousand pictures every month because I’ve finally cleared a hurdle I didn’t know I was even approaching. I feel confident every single time I pick up my camera. I feel like I know what I’m doing, I know how to get what I want, and faster. And yeah, I still experiment, but it doesn’t take me 30 or 50 or 100 shots to figure it out every time now. One or two and I can see the problem, a few more to make some changes, and then I have what I wanted, faster than before.
Because of what he wrote I’ve gone from feeling kind of badly about how few pictures I’ve been taking to feeling kind of good about my skill, and said skill being at the level I always wanted but didn’t realize I wanted.
Plus, you know, in one week I’ll be in a new environment with new places and people to photograph, and that’s good. I can’t wait. New things.
So thanks, Merlin. I think I needed that.
[EDIT: looks like Atox enjoyed the same post but with a different perspective]
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