What Stops Us From Excelling at Photography?
We all have stuff that gets in our way.
I have mine, you have yours.
I have never met anyone who didn’t have crap that slowed them down, made them pause, or made them consider their worth.
Never.
And I have met some pretty impressive people.
They are the tops in their fields. From artists to CEO’s, I have worked with them and am proud to call many of them friends.
And even the most successful of them admit to personal doubts, troubling moments that cause them to wonder if they are doing the right thing, or whether what they are doing is “worth it”.
The thing that separates the most successful from the ones who are not at the top is the ability to push through the doubts and just DO the damn thing.
Execution is mandatory for success.
We can sit around and talk about how cool this business idea is for hours on end. We can create business plans, and meet with great thinkers, and re-evaluate our terms, and spend 1000 hours looking for the perfect design for our logo, and on and on…
But that is just BS resistance.
And we know it down inside ourselves and the knowledge that we are caving into the wheel spinning of resistance makes us even more unable to push the start button.
We get caught in that cycle of idea, plan, stall, find ways to back out, kill an idea — then get another idea, plan, kill, — well, you get it.
Many times we let other people make those decisions for us.
“I’m planning on transitioning into a full-time food photographer by end of 2022”, you spill to your friends.
And you get this back.
“You can’t do that. Nobody is making money at shooting food. My brother’s girlfriend’s aunt knew a guy whose brother’s roommate’s brother tried becoming a photographer and he failed so bad they put him in prison…”
Yeah, that’s enough to stop us from doing something we think we want to do so very badly we can taste it.
I wonder why?
We all have a self-preservation gene that runs through our decision making. We look at risks and evaluate outcomes every moment of the day.
Do I make this lefthand turn, or is that car coming a bit faster than I can turn, and what about the lady on the bike, and there is a car coming up fast behind me, and the light may change and, and, and…
Hey, we handle that sort of stuff every single day.
(Please watch for motorcyclists, just sayin’…)
That is part of our DNA — rustles in the brush could be a tiger, so be prepared to get out of there. Sure, it could be a bunny or a puff of wind, but if we THINK it is a tiger, the outcome is the same.
We run away from the perceived danger.
I have seen many photographers do this very same thing.
And the interesting thing is that so often they do it at just the moment they are getting ready to break out.
Years of workshops, shooting, books, more shooting, classes, even more shooting, editing, compiling, editing, and shooting more.
The portfolio is looking better than they had imagined only a few short years ago. It is becoming a viable body of work.
They have the gear they need, the knowledge needed to do a good photograph under bad conditions, and then…
They stop.
They are ‘burned out’.
They ‘need a break’.
They ‘ran out of time’.
They decided that they are ‘too old’.
That other guy is “better than me”.
They got in a “slump and couldn’t get out”.
Now to be sure, there are certainly legitimate reasons to stop.
If finances are a challenge, then that must be dealt with. A part-time gig, or something to do to save up for the next attempt.
If ‘GAS’ has used up all your capital, that may mean a garage sale is in your future. Do you really need all that stuff?
If you have serious family or personal medical issues, it is understandable.
I am not talking about those folks. Those are real challenges that must be addressed.
I am talking about photographers who I KNOW can be making imagery and building a business who turn away at the last minute for reasons that always seems especially sad to me.
One of the most important things that any of us do is choose our path. Sometimes those paths are not very stable, or clearly marked, or even a bit dangerous. That takes guts, perseverance, and self-evaluation.
And I get it.
I really do.
What, you think I have not dealt with resistance? Do you believe I am immune to depressing results, challenges that seem insurmountable, and pressures to quit and just go work at an appliance store?
Seriously?
Of course I face those same issues. Of course I want(ed) to quit when things went sideways. Of course I get the problems that being self-employed as an artist brings. I live that stuff every day and have done so for over 50+ years.
I never want to come on here and preach like I am never dealing with the same issues that those just starting out are. I am, most assuredly I am.
And that is what makes these challenges all the more clear to me.
When I see my frustrations in someone else’s story, I know I am not alone. And I remember that there are ways around the challenges that can ease the problems and present cool solutions.
If I execute.
Photography is all about execution.
And execution is hard when we make it so.
To make a photograph, we must first acquire a camera — whether that means buying one or just the effort to get it out of the bag, set it up, check the batteries, choose the lenses, set up lights if we need to — after clearing out the garage so we have enough room to work, then set up the lights and get the background stand in position and… Or we have to get the gear in the car, and stop for gas and get something to eat, and then drive for a couple of hours, then try to find a good photograph, then drive home and take the gear out ofthecarandputitawayandgettheimagesoffthe….
Geeeezzzzz… that is a lot of effort.
I guess I could grab my iPhone and snap a shot and be perfectly happy knowing that I just made a photograph.
Of my foot.
Or the cat.
Or the cat’s foot.
Yawn.
Execution. For sure. But maybe that is the lowest of the settings on the bar.
Deliberately making images means making deliberate choices about our time, our energy, our gear, and the entire production cycle of photography.
That is not as easy as we sometimes think it should be.
Our job is not to make ‘an’ image, it is to make an ‘engaging’ image.
“A” photograph is not as important to me as “THE” photograph.
And that is the hard part.
We have to execute strategically to create excellence. Excellence in the work and in our selves. We fought through the internal and external battles to get something done. Done right.
Recently I began writing about some of the images that I missed. Yeah, the ones that are just trapped in my mind but were never captured on film or sensor.
There are about 11 million of them, but I am only writing about 40 or so of them.
The ones I can remember with brilliant accuracy (well, not really but in my mind, they are brilliantly accurate, ya know).
Every damn one of them was an award-winning photograph that I missed, or simply didn’t turn the car around to get it, or got caught up with another part of the shoot and forgot to ask the model if she would… oh hell, so many missed images.
Excelling at photography is executing.
Excelling at anything is executing.
Plan.
Prepare.
Research.
Prepare some more.
But at some point you have to push the button, pull the trigger, hit ‘send”, make the call… whatever it takes to get us from sitting there with an idea to seeing that idea come to life.
What keeps me from excelling?
Some days I deal with a bit of fear. Unknown stuff scares me a bit.
I have some trust issues — partners have proven problematic in my life.
I can sometimes be too focused on the ‘schedule’ to see the amazing things happening before me.
But I am working on those things.
Everyday.
What stops you from excelling and how are you dealing with it — or them?
