Why Do Photographers Fail?

I got an email newsletter the other day that really struck a chord with me.  It’s about what I am always trying to share with you and with other photographers that I meet–and something that I struggle with in my own life and photographic pursuits.  I’m passing this on in hopes that it will be meaningful and helpful.

This comes from one of my favorite photography bloggers, Scott Bourne, published on his blog Photofocus, July 20, 2013.  Scott always speaks his mind.  He’s honest and straightforward with his opinions and advice.  I really appreciate that and I have gained so many wonderful insights about what a photographer is from him–beyond how or what a photographer does.  I hope you’ll take the time to read his powerful message, “Why Do Photographers Fail?”

“I’ve been studying (almost from the standpoint of an anthropologist) why photographers fail. Why? Because I’ve dedicated the last 15 years of my life to helping photographers improve. But there are some who just can’t make the cut. And I wanted to know why.

While I am not in a position to write a white paper on the subject, I do have a few ideas that I’d like to share.

My empirical research leads me to believe that most photographers fail for one of these similar reasons.

1. They have very low self-esteem.

2. They lack confidence.

3. They focus on what they don’t have or what they don’t do well instead of what they do have and do well.

You can see these are all related. You see the evidence of them in things like a Nikon v. Canon discussion. The photographers who shoot Nikon are concerned by the photographers who shoot Canon because the fact that someone else picked another camera brand threatens the validation they need. Same thing happens with Canon shooters worrying about why someone else shoots Nikon.

Another thing I’ve noticed is the photographers who loudly demand “purity”. I made some flower photographs the other day. I did them in my studio so I could test a new light at the same time I was making the flower shots. The photographers who commented that I wasn’t a REAL flower photographer were those who demand purity. I should have made those shots outdoors they claimed. When you see or hear photographers attacking because you aren’t pure enough, then you have a sure sign of insecurity.

The film shooters went nuts when I said I preferred digital. They loudly proclaimed that REAL photographers use film and anyone who doesn’t can’t call what they do photography, etc., etc., etc. I could go on and on and on and on and on but you get the idea.

One of my core beliefs is that photographers who are more concerned about the process than the picture are failing. This concern over process is also a sign of someone who is insecure. Most of the people who do fail at photography fail because they used some sort of excuse to let themselves off the hook. But this again comes from a lack of confidence.

… where did those insecurities, low self-esteem and lack of confidence come from? …I am certain that “comparison” plays a major part in the creation of these problems.

Theodore Roosevelt once said that comparing your work, your life, or anything else will only steal your joy. Why? Because when you think about your situation, you have all the data on what you lack–all your ugly habits, your lack of knowledge, your lack of skill, your fear, etc. But when you compare against someone or something else you only see the good side of their work. You only see their best side. It’s like always seeing someone when they are youthful, well-kept, wearing their best clothes every day instead of seeing them by old and tired by the side of the road, on a hot day, when they are wearing jeans and covered with oil from fixing their car. You have an unrealistic view of the other person, but a realistic view of yourself. Or at least your opinion of a realistic view of yourself.

It makes no sense to hold yourself up against someone else’s definition of greatness. You should only judge yourself based on your own ideals and principles. Leave everything and everyone else out of it. It’s your life so live it. Nobody else can do that for you, nor can you live anyone else’s life. This is very important because otherwise you will be denied your joy.

….It’s been my experience that people who fail, or are unhappy, etc, are people who focus on their opinion of their circumstances, rather than their actual circumstances. There is a difference. Sometimes you can’t change your circumstances, but you can change your opinion. And you can start that process by today, this instant, making an agreement to stop comparing yourself, your photography, your camera gear, your life with others. Just do you. That’s the person we’ve been waiting to see behind the camera in the first place.

Comparison steals joy. Don’t let this happen to you.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Scott’s words, I felt, were quite pertinent with other implications as well.  So often we struggle with similar issues in our Christian lives—low self-esteem, lack of confidence and comparison.  God wants us to focus on Him and through His working and leading in our lives we progress and develop with unique talents and abilities that will allow Him to work through us to bless others.  Don’t compare yourself, your talents or abilities with others, just be you, and grow in your relationship with God in the way the He is leading you.

“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.  Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”  –Romans 12:2 NLT

Photography 101

Every day I receive a number of email/newsletters from various photography sites and I read EVERY ONE of them.  Often I come across a number that are really outstanding—I think, anyway—so, I’m going to pass some of these on here at this blog in hopes that you, too, will find them beneficial.    Naturally, I’ll be giving credit to who wrote them and where I got them—my hope is that you will enjoy these items and become excited about some of the great photography and photographers that are out there.

There is a wealth of fantastic information that is available to us these days but at the same time we are all so busy and it can be hard to discover these things for ourselves.  Hopefully my passion, (i.e. “my obsession”—if you ask my wife….) in wanting to constantly learn and improve will be helpful to you as I share some these great articles.

I thought about taking many of the topics and rewriting them myself, but I’m in the same boat as many of you—a busy demanding (non-photography) day job, constant other appointments and demands, and little free time.  Rather than “re-invent the wheel”, I’ve decided to share these pretty much “as is” with my introductory comments and maybe some minor edits to ensure that it will flow nicely for your reading pleasure.  I’m actually pretty excited about this because I’m coming across so many great resources that I want to share with others.  I really hope you will enjoy these, too.

So, let’s get into what I want to share today.  I want to go back to the basics before jumping into anything else.

I came across this article last week in my newsletter from PictureCorrect.com.  One of topics in this newsletter was entitled Photography 101.  It includes a video class presentation by Jeff Cable.  The video is an hour and a half long but it was outstanding (Yes, I DID watch the entire presentation—AND I took notes!).  Jeff delivers an in depth primer on the essentials of photography.  It was a great presentation with sound advice regardless of your skill level.  I heartily recommend you take some time to watch it.  If you’re self-taught, as I am, I REALLY recommend that you watch this video—there is so many great things that he shares here:

Photography 101 with Jeff Cable

Here is some additional information from the newsletter:

“A Few Pointers to Get You Started

• Know what your subject is. Although it may seem like a no-brainer, you’d be surprised at how often novice photographers take photographs unaware of what the main attraction is.
• Don’t shoot centered all the time. In fact, a majority of the time, photos in which the subject is off centered are more aesthetically pleasing.
• Choose the backgrounds of your images selectively. Make sure there are no eyesores back there. If there are move your subject when possible. Otherwise, adjust your aperture down so the background blurs out.
• In some cases the background can be essential to the photograph. If they contribute to the story the photograph is telling take advantage of them by allowing them to remain at least slightly in focus.
• If you are still shooting in auto mode and want to break out of it, try aperture priority as a stepping stone.
• If the subject of your photo is a person’s face, the eyes must be in focus if you want to a make a good image.

Photo by Jeff Cable

In this case, the fisherman in the background, help create context to the subject–the hungry birds are waiting for scraps.

Practice, Practice, Practice

The best way to improve your photography, of course, is to practice as often as you can. Always try to have a camera with you and when you cannot, continue to look at your surroundings as though you are trying to create a photograph. Pay attention to the light, compose hypothetical shots in your mind, and explore different angles to find the best one.

As Cable says in the video, he takes photographs for himself. Photography, like all forms of art, is highly subjective. What one person finds to be exceptional, another may disregard altogether. Find a style that you like and work on fine tuning it using the pointers you have learned in the video above.”

I hope you find this posting helpful.  You can find more about Jeff Cable and his photography, including more instructional videos, at his website:  jeffcable.com 

6 Reasons Why Photography Matters

Every day I receive an article via my email from the Digital Photography School.  DPS has been one of my most valuable resources as I strive to become a better photographer and it’s my “go to” place when I want to learn how to do something.

Occasionally an article will come through that really grabs my attention and I file it away for future reference.  However, none have ever come though like the one I got yesterday.  This little article really spoke to how I have always felt about photography and why it is such a powerful medium.  I want to share it with you in its entirety in hopes that it will touch you as well and reinforce your passion for photography:

Declan O’Neill is a professional photographer who lives in the South Island, New Zealand. He travels extensively capturing the beauty of New Zealand’s extraordinary landscape. The photographs which accompany this article are part of a series entitled ‘The Anatomy of Melancholy’ which is dedicated to the memory of his sister, Ann, who died from Multiple Systems Atrophy.

1. Our photographs tell us what is important to us

When you ask people what possessions they would rescue from their burning house, one of the most frequent answers is the photograph album or a computer with their digital images. When in panic mode it’s interesting that we would probably grab photos rather than valuable jewelry. This impulse to save our recorded memories is a powerful force which tells us much about the role of photography in our lives and our constant desire to distil our most precious moments into images.

We preserve the important events and people in our lives. The ceremonies of birth and birthdays, marriages and anniversaries, holidays and new houses are all recorded because they matter. Photographs are our personal story, a timeline of our lives filled with faces and places that we love. They are our story, which we can share with others. The hundreds of images come together to form a narrative of our lives.

2. Photographs are part of our legacy

Once I remember sitting in a train as it passed a playground where children were standing to attention for the annual school photograph. Across the front row sat the teachers and behind them, hundreds of children neatly preened and uniformed. For the briefest second the entire assembly was motionless. We were passing just as the photographer clicked the shutter. Suddenly, as if in slow motion, the huge group scattered as children escaped their enforced immobility. The neat rows dissolved and broke into individuals who were now kicking footballs or huddled in friendship groups. None of those children realized that the photograph was probably going to outlive them. A couple of generations later it might surface among old papers in an attic and someone would search for granddad among the fresh young faces. Photographs matter because they freeze moments of our lives which pass unremarkably and which seem to have little importance to us at the time. The significance, however, may be for others who search for the person we once were or the places we once knew. They can be small pieces of a jigsaw that complete the larger picture of our lives.

3. Photographs allow us to share and to communicate.

Images are much more than a simple record. Photography speaks to the best and most generous part of our human nature – the desire to share what we find beautiful and interesting with others. You only have to look at Flickr and a multitude of photo sharing sites to see this impulse at work. Millions of people sharing their personal, passionate and sometimes quirky take on the world around them. Our images can involve a world of strangers in our life. How powerful is that?

4. Photography makes us artists

Photography allows us to express ourselves through an art form. We notice a beautiful landscape or an old man’s lined face and we want to capture it. Each of us will have a different reason to do so but, essentially, we want to create something. However humdrum our nine-to-five lives may be, the creation of an image makes us an artist. It feels good.

5. Photography is a complex language

Our images can express joy and sorrow, wonder and sympathy. Every human emotion can find a place in photography. For many years I never valued my photographs of overcast landscape because I believed that there was no beauty in a land with muted colours and a leaden sky. I wanted the land to be alive with colour and vibrancy. However, lack of colour in a landscape makes you search for other things that often go unremarked in bright sunlight. It could be a symmetry of hills or a tree standing out from a forest of thousands. I have suffered from depression for most of my adult life and photography gave me a language to express feelings for which I can find no words. We have a miserably poor vocabulary for mental illness and photography has allowed me to develop a visual language for some of the most difficult emotions.

6. Photography has the power to move us

Photographs can grab our attention and speak directly to our emotions. Nick Ut’s photograph of a crying Vietnamese girl whose clothes have been burnt away by napalm embodies the power of a single image. At a more subtle level, we can learn lessons about a whole range of emotions. Grief has the power to wash away the luminance and chrominance of our lives. There is no magic way to restore them at will. We have to be patient. But while waiting we can search for the shapes and patterns that are still there in the grayness. They will lead us back to colour eventually. At moments of great sorrow in my life I have used images to express that hope of returning colour.

Photography, at its best, is a powerful language which speaks to our emotions. It allows us to tell our story and show others our framing of the world around us.

Declan O’Neill is a professional photographer living in the South Island of New Zealand.
site: www.newzealandlandscape.com

A New Year’s Start

“Seasons Greetings” everyone.

Well, with the New Year there always seems to come the feeling of a fresh new start and a resolve to make this year better than the last—or at least try to accomplish the things you weren’t able to accomplish in the previous.  I know I’m a little late in getting out the first blog of the new year, but hey, here it is 🙂

I really feel that this is going to be a great and interesting year for the Photography Ministry at Bridgeway.  As many of you know, we had been talking about starting a Photography “club” (for want of a better word or term) when suddenly to our surprise the Creative Arts Ministry (of which the Photography Ministry is a part) started an Audio Visual Club which meets the first Thursday of every month.  Rather than also start our own club we’re going to incorporate or rather utilize this new resource as a part of our own as well.  It keeps us plugged in to the larger CA Ministry as a whole and may also open up areas of interest to photography ministry members that they had not considered before.  So, rather than reinvent the wheel we’ll just add some shiny hubcaps to it with our own unique talents and support the wider ministry.

One of the things I would like to add is to let the AV Club know about our photo walks that we have started.  It may not always be possible to have one every month but at least every other month—we’ll see how it goes.  But what I was thinking is that we would have the photo walks to coincide with the weekend following the AV Club meeting.  That way we can let folks know when and where we will be having the next photo walk.  We would open it up to not just photographers but even the video team if they like—and of course anyone you would like to invite to join us.  If possible I’ll try to incorporate a place to go with the topic that was just covered at the Club meeting in order to possibly expand on things while it’s fresh in our minds.

As always I will make sure that we have a gallery folder set up for each photo walk.  That way we can share our photos and learn from each other’s style, techniques, and perspectives.  If you get them turned in to me in time we could possibly even take a sampling of photos that were taken to be played on a slide show while people are coming in and mingling at the start of the next meeting.  It’d be cool to show what we did and maybe encourage others to join us at the next one.

There’s a lot of other things I’d like to share and will do so in coming blogs and updates but for now I just wanted to also mention the direction that I am going to take with this blog in the future.  I’m trying to make the blog more resource and information friendly to provide things not just for your enjoyment but also for your education and to maybe spur interest to take your photography into new areas that you might have never tried before.

So, one of the things I’ve done is added a “Resource” page where there are a number of free ebooks and presentations that I have found that you can download to your computer.  Generally these will be in pdf format but possibly other formats in the future—perhaps a PowerPoint Presentation or video, etc.

Then, as a drop-down in the menu under the “Resource” page, I’ve added a “Helpful Links” page.  Here, rather than having downloads, these will be links to other photography sites and topics of interest.  This will be a growing list and I will add more links as I come across them in my studies.  I’d love for you to let me know when you come across some great sites or topics that you feel might be of interest to the team.  This will be a great way to share our talents and perspectives on photography with each other.

If you have other ideas that you’d like to see included on this blog site please let me know.  I would love to make this as helpful as possible to, not only our team, but anyone else who happens upon our site.

In addition to writing blog entries, I’ve decided to start including or linking to other blogs from other photographers and sites that I hope will be of interest.  EVERY day I am researching, reading and studying to learn more about photography—simply because I just love it and enjoy learning how to become a better photographer.  I’m always saving special articles, email newsletters and things I come across that I think are really outstanding—they’re too good to just tuck away in my own files, I want you to enjoy them, too, and maybe get as excited about them as I am.  So you can expect those in upcoming posts.

Well, that’s about it for this entry.  Check out some of the things I’ve added.  Let me know what you’d like to see included, possible locations or topics for photo walks, etc.  I think that this is going to be an exciting year and that God is going to bring so wonderful opportunities for us to share in.

To His Glory!

Howie

Aperture Priority…

The other day I was re-reading though some of the postings on this blog—particularly the one about “You know you’re a Photographer if…”  and cracking myself up over the ones I could definitely relate to—I’m sorry, but I’m easily amused 🙂

Anyway, for some reason, one of the items caught my attention:  “You know what Aperture Priority means…”.  Being a dog sport action photographer for the past 5 years, of course, I knew what that one meant.  That’s the way I usually shoot for those events–set your Aperture to what you require and let the camera worry about speed, etc.  But, for some reason I stopped myself and thought, “Yeah, that’s what I DO but what does it really MEAN??

So, I decided to look it up.  There were the usual technical terms, mechanics and definitions that would bore the non-geekie types to tears, but in the midst of what I was reading I was struck by one certain statement:

“An adjustable opening in an optical instrument, such as a camera, that limits the amount of light passing through a lens to expose the sensor”

That stopped me “dead-in-my-tracks”, so to speak.  I had never looked at it that way before—the implications of that statement were astonishing to me!  I’ll explain:

The aperture in a camera lens is similar to the iris in our own eyes.  When more light is required to properly focus upon a subject, in a darkened environment, our iris and the aperture in a camera lens will open wider to allow the necessary light to reveal–to expose–the subject.

With a camera aperture there is also another interesting aspect.  As the aperture is opened wider to receive the necessary light and allow us to focus on the subject, items in the background will tend to blur and become less distinct.  When the aperture is closed down, to reduce the amount of light entering into the camera, all the blurred background items come into focus.

Now, I’m not trying to stretch the applications of an illustration but this is the simple point that struck me:   Jesus said, “…I am the Light of the world…” (Jn 8:12).  We as Christians need Him–His Light, in our lives.  He went on to say in 12:46, “I have come into the world as a light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness”.  We have been rescued from darkness into light and the more we focus on Him and allow the exposure of His Light into our lives, the clearer our focus is upon Him–and things in the background will blur in comparison.

Conversely, the more we close down our aperture, less light is allowed to enter and expose our sensor.  As a result, more things in the background are revealed and allowed to clutter the focus on our subject.  Do the cares and pressures of this world—sometimes, maybe too often–seem to overpower your focus, overwhelm your life and dim the Light??

“Turn your eyes upon Jesus.  Look full on His wonderful face and the things of this earth will grow strangely dim in the Light of His Glory and Grace.”

I hope you get my simple point.

What is your Aperture setting?…….

For Him –

Howie