Category Archives: Edited Life
Pitfalls of success
A lot is written about failure and coping with it, bouncing back and moving on but not much is written about dealing with success. Countless tennis players tumble at their match that follows a big victory and in other sports similar things can be seen showing success can be hard to deal with – why? What happens when we succeed at something beyond our expectations?
When the congratulations are over and the dust settles there are a number of pitfalls that can occur afterwards. We can doubt ourselves and worry this is a fluke we cannot reproduce; we got lucky and it’s a one hit wonder. We can be more comfortable falling a little short of expectation by engaging a logical troubleshooting mindset and working out what we would do next time to make it better, but unprecedented results are a little hard to evaluate; defined problems can be solved and tackled, what are we meant to do about success? Our old work can start to look substandard compounding the insecurity because we cannot find how this new piece of work was so much more improved. What happens if we never produce work this good again and it was an accident? What happens if clients expect this level all the time? It can create a higher level of expectation for further work, work that may then not measure up to this raised standard.
It’s easy to be totally committed and focused on a project, be highly invested in the outcome and have it exceed expectation and after the great feeling be left worried and anxious, this is something to be mindful of.
Does photography change us?
“You know, actually photography is a very philosophical thing. It teaches you to see things.” – Nikola Borissov
For a while I tried to pursue music and it look me a while before I realised as much as I liked it I really had no natural ability at it and perhaps it wasn’t the best choice for me. However it did leave me something and that thing I feel is significant: the way I listened to music irreversibly changed. The greater understanding and experience helped me to appreciate music I didn’t before and be more of aware of the music I liked previously and I could now experience it in a different way. I couldn’t listen to music the same way I as I had before and many people who learn an instrument often find that their music taste also changes at the same time.
Does something like this also happen with photography? I think so. I notice so much more; scale, how things look different in different light, the things in a scene that are most important to me and that aren’t, small details that are significant, colours that work together… and endless list. The biggest change seems to be the way I perceive photographs and how I use it. For most people a photograph is usually a record for a memory, a child’s birthday or their family on holiday and the memories attached to it with the subjects more important than the photograph itself and it’s merits. No one usually takes a picture of something they want to forget but some war photographers do. The change seems to come when instead a photograph is taken for it’s own sake and as something stand on it’s own.
I’ve had strange looks from people especially next to famous city landmarks because really what interested me there is the puddle or the light on the girl sat on a bench writing something. I’ve also had people with me say “why would you want to take a picture of that?” This is what makes me think pursuing photography has changed me, it’s changed the way I see things, it’s changed what I look for whether I have my camera or not; these are not pictures taken as memories they mean something more and are a reflection of what I see and notice. An artist recognises and reacts to the unique creative opportunities that present themselves.
Fear of completion
Finishing something is scary despite it being what we are working towards. When something is finished there is no more room to hide, there are no “in work” excuses for any shortcomings and we must face what we have produced straight on. It’s scary because there is a risk that for all our efforts we may not produce something that matches our hopes and expectations so it’s easy to leave work ‘almost there’ and find excuses to pursue other things leaving an ever greater quantity unfinished.
It is often difficult to look at our finished work and we can never see it like others can. We agonise over whether that picture was the strongest or best one to express what we wanted, how we composed it and what we did or didn’t include, whether we should crop tighter or even whether it was worthy idea to pursue to start with. Other people will never know nor experience these feelings when looking at our work and so perhaps it is only them that can truly enjoy it.
Big ideas
It’s great to think big and be ambitious letting our imagination and creativity run riot without restriction but when it comes to realising these, things can get difficult. Usually the best creative concepts are not easy, they are not something that’s been done before and won’t make ‘sense’ to do to many people when there are easier alternatives, a great example is photographer Sam Abell who had an inspiring year-long quest to find the perfect image for his story.
A lot stems from having to be the ideas person and also the practical person making it a reality. In many industries there are often conflicts between creatives and the engineers who have to make it work but as a photographer we usually have to both these roles so the inner conflict can be a significant source of anguish and this is important to recognise. It’s easy to say “I can’t” when things get difficult and start scaling an idea back rather than taking it further or diluting it to be easily achievable but the result can be a half hearted attempt at a good idea – a dissatisfying compromise. Conversely, the difficulties can be overwhelming and we stall getting disheartened never creating anything. Both these situations are undesirable and these are the dangers that come with big ideas long before the shutter is pressed; it’s a balancing act of recognising what really isn’t possible, letting it go or making concessions and just taking the easy way out never being true to our idea. It’s a difficult middle ground and there is often no way of knowing if we have it right as we a torn in two directions.
Permission to fail
I have ideas and things I have wanted want to try, some more developed than others with all sorts of inspiration gathered together from various sources but have gone no further because I’ve been afraid to and for a long time I have had no idea why, I’d just switch to developing a different idea instead as avoidance. Giving ourselves permission to fail, to make a mess of things and have it be less than what we wanted won’t kill the idea. Whenever we are overly invested in something’s success we can become terrified of it’s failure making us paralysed in inaction. Be scared but don’t let it stifle you.
When the pressure is on shooting for a client we sensibly stick to what we are comfortable with (at least until we know we have ‘it’) and this comfort zone never expands without hard work and practice outside of this critical arena. Our personal work is not a grand performance where we only get one go or one chance to make it work, some circumstances may change but our idea and development is all still there ready for us to learn and try again. What will change is our passion and enthusiasm may not always be there as time moves on and the creative side of us will become frustrated as the things we are driven to create are never realised.
Perhaps it is important to realise that there is probably no ‘eureka’ moment where we suddenly discover something and can forge ahead with all we dreamed try, what holds us back is often not our skills and there will probably never be a ‘right’ time when we are not fearful or insecure if we are pushing ourselves. We will probably always be unsure and feeling our way and this is how we know we are pushing yourselves and in doing so we will trip up once in a while and should allow ourselves to accept it when we do. If we are pretty good, we are already better than the people waiting to be perfect.
If we do our best, that’s all we can really ask of ourselves and this doesn’t mean we won’t have made mistakes or that we haven’t learned a lot or even that we won’t do things differently next time, it just means that we did everything we could for this particular shoot. Be happy with that.
The risk of trying
To become accomplished at something takes hard work and practice, but issues of time and motivation aside, there is another problem: people only ever want to experience the finished result and an accomplished one at that. People may have passing intrigue into a scene that did not have made the grade in their favourite film or some early B-sides from their favourite band but no one is interested in hearing an aspiring musician struggle over the same bars in a piece of music time after time, piece after piece and so this usually stays behind closed doors. The people close to us can often be rather dismissive and sometimes thoughtless in their comments and jokes when discussing our ‘hobbies’ perhaps without any idea how important they are to us.
There is a big difference between having a try at something just for fun where any success at all is unexpected and the transition to taking something seriously where there is an expected level of performance by us personally or by others whether it is direct, implicit or even imagined. A big part of it, at least for me, is embarrassment and possible humiliation; music can be unfortunate in that it is usually very public to those who live with us but it happens with most if not all creative outlets since inevitably people are intrigued to see the results of what we have spent so much time on. Having others see or listen to what you produce KNOWING the amount of effort you have put in is really an act of faith especially since it takes so much time and effort to achieve a basic level of competence. I had someone once introduce me to her friends as “This is Mark, he’s a great photographer” which is quite a compliment in reality but I was cringing on the inside.
Others are also not likely to look at our results in the same way as we do. There are many many occasions where the photograph I take might itself be terrible but the lighting I was trying to get to work finally came off and I know I have figured it out to be able to use in the future or a concept shows great potential even though the execution was far from what is required. For me this would be a breakthrough while to someone else it may make little sense. Another example might be a musician mastering a particularly difficult piece made so by the time signatures that may not sound at all impressive to an average listener.
Lingering in my mind is often “but what happens if after all the time, learning, effort, money what I produce is rubbish?” Some people feel compelled to desperately try and explain the difficulties in capturing a photograph to try and mitigate possible criticism; we all seem to deal with this fear it in different ways.
Given all this, is it any wonder why for so many of us, certainly at the outset, our creative interests are so solitary and private or so many people are afraid to try?
