Feeling discouraged? Don’t ask too much of yourself…or your photography
At a recent photo walk, one of the participants pulled me aside and expressed his frustration at not shooting lots of “keeper” images during group photo outings. He was visibly irritated with his performance (or lack of) and it was pretty obvious that he was not enjoying himself. Since the whole point of a photo walk is to enjoy yourself, I gave him some words of advice that kept me from chucking my gear in a bin years ago… take things one step at a time and always remember how far you’ve come, not how far you have to go. You see, digital photography can be both as simple or as complex as you want to make it. Be careful not to try too many things at once, especially when you’re learning the basics.
Someone once told me “there’ll always be greater and lesser people than you out there, the trick is to accept that fact and do your best with the tools at hand.” Applied to digital photography, it means set small goals for yourself at every step in your photo evolution. Goals such as “I’m going to use the manual exposure settings for half the photos I shoot today” or “I’m going to experiment with at least one HDR image” are easy to set and, once achieved, will give you a real sense of accomplishment. Stack one accomplishment onto another, then add another and you’ll soon see how much your skills are improving.
I set small “fun” goals for myself all the time. Last weekend, I hosted a photo walk and, knowing I would be tied up helping folks with their photography and making sure everyone was having a great time, set only one goal for myself. I wanted to make one good photograph…something I could frame and hang on my wall. No stress, just one photo. After walking through the park for a couple hours, I missed several shots, let other possibilities pass me by for one reason or another. No pressure, I only needed one shot, right? As I was leaning on the railing, taking a break after the walk down to the swamp bridge, the shot I was looking for happened right in front of me. That’s when I shot this photo:
Knowing I had this shot “in the bag,” I relaxed a bit and focused my attentions (pun intended) on helping other photo walkers for the rest of the morning. I didn’t stop looking, mind you (see my previous post on why you don’t want to do that), but my main photographic goal for the day was accomplished. As I look at the framed photo over my Mac, I’ll always be reminded of the fun I had hosting this photo walk, thanks to setting my goals to “minimum” for the day. Remember, if photography stresses you out, you’re doing something wrong!
