Rule 43: Be Thankful For Other Photographers’ Work

 

What fuels your photography?

Just as we don’t photograph for ourselves alone, we also shouldn’t learn from ourselves alone. There are countless photographers who’ve preceded us, to say nothing of our contemporaries (who, at last count, are legion). And even though there are times that, as I mentioned this time last week, it feels as though someone else has beaten us to darned near everything, that’s actually something we should be glad for.

For starters, it can be very intimidating to blaze your own trail. It’s always helpful when someone’s been there first; their work acts as a roadmap or a compass into what’s essentially uncharted territory when you’re first starting out. Be grateful that someone else’s work, and experience, is there to light your way, whether that person’s name has gone down in history, or isn’t known outside your camera club.

Others’ work can also be a good indicator to you of what you would, or would not, like to do or become as a photographer. If you’ve read much of what I’ve posted here, you’ve already got a pretty good idea of the photographers who inspire me… names like Cartier Bresson, Lange, Doisneau, du Chemin, and Orwig, for instance. Their photography, along with countless others’ photos, have given me a sense of what’s possible. Your list will probably be much different than mine. That’s okay. But I’d definitely suggest that you make one. Pay equal attention to photographers whose stuff you don’t like, and don’t appreciate them any less; they, too, have quite a lot to teach you if you let them.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you will come across photographers whose work and style you appreciate even if it’s 180 degrees from what you do, or would like to. Be especially thankful for those photographers. I’m reminded of this almost every day when I look at the work of someone like Annie Liebowitz, whose photos show the touch of someone who’s just as much an auteur as a photographer. The same thing happens with, say, a really good wedding photographer. That takes a kind of talent that I haven’t got, and what’s more, a talent that I’m not all that interested in cultivating (the thought of photographing someone else’s once-in-a-lifetime event scares the shit out of me, to be completely honest). But I appreciate that talent, I appreciate the time and effort that someone’s put into their craft to arrive at the point that they can make those kinds of photos, and I especially appreciate that they’re generous enough to share them with the rest of us. I’m half tempted to call or email them and thank them for doing that kind of photography so that I don’t have to!

That’s just my take. What about you? What can you find, or have you found, to appreciate in other photographers’ photography?

Rule 42: It’s All Been Done

“Well,” said the Inspector, “I’ve seen better.” (Photo by kind permission of Dan Phelps)

As you read this, you’re probably no more than an hour’s drive from some kind of major landmark. Maybe it’s something world famous, like the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. Maybe it’s something better-known within your state, or just to the locals. Whatever it is, you may very well have despaired that it’s been photographed to death. And this isn’t something that’s limited to landmarks, either. No matter what your bailiwick is, whatever your subject of choice may happen to be, you probably feel that it’s all been done.

In a sense, you’re right.

Nearly every genre of photography, until someone goes and devises a new one, has been done, and then done some more. How many views can we possibly get of the Grand Canyon, of cars, people, products, or any of the thousands of other things we’ve put in front of the camera?

As if that’s not bad enough, if you’re just getting started and you’re even reasonably visually literate, you start to realize pretty quickly that it’s not only been done, but someone else’s done it really, really well.* Yes, you can always find someone whose work isn’t as good as yours, but really, what good is that? We should never aspire to be as good as, or better than, someone who’s not that good to start with, ’cause that’s not setting the bar very high.

So anyway. Here you are, realizing that someone else has beaten you to your favorite subject. If you let it, this can be discouraging, to say the least. So don’t let it. Yes, Ansel Adams made breathtaking photos of landscapes. Sure, Herb Ritts did fashion like nobody’s business. Hell, even if you want to photograph toys, there are people out there who make Legos look like high art.

The essentials are all packed. (Paul Bogan/The First 10,000)

And at some point, they probably had the same thought you did. Somebody else got there first. And damn, they’re good. Then they went ahead and did it anyway, and proceeded to find their own way of working, their own voices, and their own vision that made what they had to say stand out from the rest of the pack.

Photography didn’t end with your favorite photographer. Hell, it didn’t start there either. Rather than letting those antecedents — your ancestors, artistically speaking — be a source of frustration, be encouraged that someone else could start off on the same well-trodden path and still find ways to take it in new directions. With time, patience, and practice — all of these things — you can, and will, do the same.

*A phenomenon that is by no means limited to photography, by the way

Postscript: Thanks to Dan Phelps for permission to use his photo. To see more of his photography (which is great, and which is also much more than Lego), visit his site (http://legomyphoto.wordpress.com) or his Flickr photostream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/rattleandhum)

Rule 41: Walk More

Skygazer

This is probably neither the first advice you’d expect to hear after several days worth of 90-plus degree weather — nor, under those circumstances, is it likely to be the first advice you want to hear. But it’s already said, and I can’t take it back now, so we’d might as well both make the best of it. When the weather’s bad — rain, snow, intense heat, freezing cold, plague of locusts — it can be very tempting to say the heck with shooting on any given day. On those rare occasions that we do brave the elements, it’s usually by hopping a train, bus, or car so that we can at least get to our shooting destination in some semblance of comfort. That’s all well and good (and it’s also better to shoot than not to shoot). However, I’d suggest dressing yourself and your camera for the weather, and setting out on foot more often.

There are a few reasons for this, not least of which is that it’s challenging to shoot from a moving vehicle. There are ways around this, same as with nearly every other photographic dilemma, and I’ll be covering those in a future post. Suffice to say for now that when you’re traveling in a vehicle, it’s often as not a matter of dumb luck trying to get a decent shot.

Leaving that aside, there’s also the issue of finding, and really seeing, your subject matter when it’s hurtling past your window at 65 miles per hour. Sometimes, in fact, it’s as though someone “up there” has deliberately decided to screw with us, putting all sorts of tantalizing things in front of us (all the more so if the photographer’s the one doing the driving). You will see strange, wondrous, and seemingly impossible things just as soon as there’s nowhere to safely pull over and get the shot.

Then there’s simple fitness. Photography’s not the Ironman Triathalon, but unless you shoot exclusively with a camera phone or a compact, the gear tends not to be very light. If you’re not in shape, carrying that stuff around all day can leave you a bit winded. Getting in better shape means having (but not necessarily taking) the option to have more gear with you, and also means having more endurance on a long day’s shooting.

More than anything else, however, the reason I suggest walking more is to reinforce something I come back to time and again in The First 10,000: the simple act of slowing down. Look, life is fast-paced enough the rest of the time. At some point in our day, or at least our week (and I don’t suggest longer intervals than that), we really do need to take the time to consciously slow the ebb and flow of life to something more manageable, more human. It’s hard to tell your eyes, or your mind, to slow down when the rest of you is traveling at or above the speed limit. Sometimes taking all the steps necessary for a good photo really does mean… well, taking steps. Photographing one step at a time, one foot in front of the other.

At the risk of sounding vaguely new agey, a good walk lets you harmonize your eyes, mind, and body, getting them all on the same page, and the same pace. I’ve mentioned before that we need to photograph with more than just our eyesight. Slowing down certainly helps the act of seeing, but it also expands our perception. You photograph differently when you can feel what’s under your feet, whether it’s an uneven gravel path or the gentle settling of your shoes into the soil; you photograph differently when you’re reading the light just as much by the warmth on your skin as by your meter; you photograph directly when your soul is as much in the moment as your body, when it’s moving with you at a pace not dictated by a clock, but measured out by the rhythm of your own heartbeat when it’s quickened by the sights in front of you.

Rule 40: There Is No Shot Clock

Leonard Furniture Company

Even if you’re only casually acquainted with sports (which in my case is being entirely too charitable), you’re probably familiar with the shot clock. Once the ball’s in play, someone on the court/field/pitch has only a set amount of time in which to do something with it. In basketball, for instance, this is probably a good thing, since it helps to keep things moving. In photography? Not so much.

The problem is, I find myself shooting from time to time as though the clock is ticking. You’d swear there was a referee standing over my shoulder with a stopwatch, and that I’d be somehow penalized if I didn’t get a certain number of shots within an allotted time. I don’t always shoot like this, but I’d be lying if I said I never did… and I’m sure that you do, or have, as well.

Mind you, I’m not trying to discount the times that the tick of the clock can be heard very loudly over what you’re doing. Maybe you’re trying to wring the most out of the golden hours; maybe the model’s only available for fifteen minutes, or the client needs the shots in thirty; there might be storm clouds on the horizon and the car’s a twenty-minute walk away; maybe you know that toddler or pregnant mom you’re shooting is going to have to make a beeline to the bathroom any minute now. In each case, then yes, you’re going to have to work quickly.

In either case, however — whether you’re under time constraints, or you could get yourself good and lost and it wouldn’t matter to anyone but you — it can be both frustrating to you as a photographer, and also end up hobbling your end results, if you’re shooting as though your hair’s on fire.  Be mindful. And if you’re in a rush, be twice as mindful, since you won’t have time to re-stage or re-shoot because you’ve done something silly and utterly avoidable.

Here’s the bottom line: whether you’re shooting for someone else, or for nobody but yourself, the “client” (your art director, your editor, yourself) isn’t going to care about the sheer volume of stuff you dump on the desk or the drive at day’s end. If you’re shooting for someone else they’re just going to want to see your best work. But guess what? If you’re shooting for yourself, you don’t want to see your worst work either. That’s just frustrating, especially when you’ve done better, know you can do better, but haven’t done it through nobody’s fault but your own. Slow down and take your time. You don’t have to punch the clock, and you won’t be penalized if you take your time in taking the shot. If you can find your “zone,” you’ll find that you had more time than you thought anyway.

Rule 39: Beat the Block

Lend me your -- Wait a Minute, Get Back Here!

As a writer and as a photographer, I’ve experienced dry spells (the dreaded writer’s/artist’s block). I don’t mean a few minutes spent staring at a blank (or sometimes even partially-filled) page or into a viewfinder waiting for the right subject. In fact, maybe “block” is a bit too coy. That makes it sound like a speed bump or a DUI checkpoint, instead of a friggin’ wall in your path, something that seems too high to go over, too low to get under, and too big to get around. I’m talking anywhere from a couple of weeks to even a couple of years at a time of having any and all creative sense feel like it’s left you. And that, let’s be blunt, is one shitty feeling when who you are is tied up in or even just informed by what you create. It’s like a part of you has gone missing and left no forwarding address. Your Muse, that fickle and capricious being, has headed for parts unknown and didn’t even invite you along for the ride. How insulting!

At that point, you’ve got two choices; wait it out, or attack it head-on.  Every so often someone, usually trying their level best to be helpful, will tell you that it will “pass.” Well, yes, it does, and will. But if you’re of a certain frame of mind — impatient, wanting to create but finding yourself frozen in place — waiting may not seem like (or, if you’re on a deadline, may well not be) an option.

What to do, then? Whatever it is that you’d normally do (writing, photography, pottery, balloon animals), keep on doing it. But we’re going to add a little twist: before you begin, you have to do one very important thing. You have to give yourself permission to be mediocre, or even terrible. Switch off your usual critical voice. Forget your technique, screw the rules, say to hell with even your craft. Your only mission, for one day or one hundred or however long it takes, is to “fake it ’til you make it.”

And when I say to ditch all your usual methods of working, I mean it. Put it — all of it — aside. Change up the times at which you work, your usual subject matter, your usual judgments and preferences and gear.* You only shoot landscapes in medium format at sunset? Not now you don’t. Remember, doing your “usual” was what got you into this rut in the first place. Shoot cars at high noon with your camera phone. Shoot cat pictures on your lunch hour with disposable cameras from the drugstore down the street. Take snapshots — yes, snapshots — of clouds or hot dog vendors or that lady at the greeting card store who looks like maybe she does whippets on the store’s helium tank. Take anything you want except landscapes with your medium format at your appointed time, until you have a very clear idea in your head of what you want — maybe even need — to shoot.

So. Wait it out, or attack it head-on? I’ve tried it both ways, and I can tell you from experience, I will not wait again, nor do I suggest that you wait. The facepalm-inducing feeling you get when the block finally lifts (or when you finally figure out how to lift it yourself) and you realize all that you could’ve been doing, could have been creating, in that lost time just ain’t worth it.

From time to time, I’ll be sharing some tips and strategies that have worked for me in getting past my own blocks (in fact, I’ll be sharing a personal favorite tomorrow), and I’d appreciate if you’d share yours too.

*This also applies to any non-photographers/writers who might’ve wandered here accidentally, by the way.

Rule 38: Shoot With What You’ve Got

Little Torches

As much as I like having an all-in-one zoom in my kit, I’ve been making a point lately of keeping it home. At first blush, that might seem like a downside or an inconvenience. While it’s not as though I worry about the other lenses feeling neglected, I do worry about my skills going soft if I’ve always got that much range at my fingertips. So the last couple of weekends have seen me shooting with my compact, and with an 18-105.

Of course, as soon as you step out of the house with one camera, or one lens, you will almost certainly come across a shot that requires precisely the piece of equipment you haven’t got. I’m surprised that a flock of pigs didn’t go flying past just out of spite. But I digress.

The first “missed” shot or two was frustrating, to be honest, and I started to second-guess my choice of lenses. But then that little voice in my head reminded me of a few things:

1. You don’t want to settle into a rut. All-in-ones can be great at those times when you have no idea where you’re going, or what you’ll find when you get there. On the flip side, however, they’re like a bulky, heavy glass crutch. If you keep that same lens on your camera all the time — and this applies equally to anything else in your kit, whether it’s a fast prime with which you’re particularly enamored, or a speedlight — pretty soon you might find yourself settling into a certain type of shooting without realizing it. Changing one variable has an interesting way of creating a cascade of other little changes, sometimes in composition (especially when you find you have more wiggle room at one end of the spectrum and less at the other), and sometimes in something as simple as shooting with your feet versus your zoom.

2. You took this thing — this camera, this lens — on purpose, whether for the optics, the pocketability, or to challenge yourself. Stick to your guns. Again, this is your habits trying to reassert themselves. We can be the nicest, most accomodating people, but when it comes to our own bad habits, we can be positively intractable (just ask my wife). That applies double, I think, to how we shoot, because all of us at one point or another have mistaken technique for vision. So, just like giving up chocolate for Lent, it’s going to take some discipline in the beginning to redirect that habit energy.

3. You have a camera, don’t you? Quit complaining! At some point, I reminded myself that my first camera when I really started to “do” photography (my beloved, and now-deceased, Kodak) couldn’t do a lot of what either of my current cameras can do. I had some of the same complaints then as now from time to time, but I learned that complaining about it wasn’t helping things any; time spent complaining, essentially, is time not spent making photos. So at some point early on, I familiarized myself as best I could with all those limitations. Sometimes it was so I could work around them; sometimes I got creative enough to use the limitations themselves. The funny thing about doing this long enough is that it becomes a perverse point of pride when you’ve found some new thing your camera can’t do. I figured that I must’ve been getting better on some level, or I wouldn’t have known I couldn’t do that!

And when it’s all said and done, that’s probably one of the healthiest things you can do. Don’t curse the limitations. Embrace them if you can, work around them if you must, and if you’re really lucky, you may find yourself hitting some other quirk or limit. Let it send you off in some new and unpredictable direction like you’re in some kind of giant pinball machine, and have some fun with it.

Rule 37: Use It or Lose It!

The Ballerina Revisited

If you’ve ever attempted a workout routine, stuck with it for a while, and then stopped (injury, bad weather, loss of motivation), you know how hard it is to get started again. You also know, as you start to get back into the swing of things, that you start to ache in places you never knew could ache. While photography doesn’t have that many aches and pains to go with it (though with heavy gear, that’s also a possibility), you still need to keep your skills sharp through plenty of practice.

This is especially true when you’re trying something new, like a different compositional technique or a camera setting that you don’t use very often. The first time or two, you may have to take mental — or literal — notes, or even refer back to the camera manual. Do it often enough, and it becomes second nature.

But if it’s something you may only be doing every so often, it’s easy to forget what you’ve learned. Yes, I know, some smartass is probably going to say that it’s just like riding a bike. If that’s the case, I’ll have to be extra careful not to fall off my tripod. But I digress. If you haven’t used a skill in a long time, it’s easy to forget how to do it, or even not to do it quite as well as you would have if you’d been in practice.

I was reminded of this comparing some recent shots to an older series taken in the same place. The more recent batch was better in a number of ways (I hadn’t been shooting that long the first time I’d gone), but I noticed in that earlier batch that some of my shots used things that I liked (and still do) but that I’d let fall by the wayside, like using frames within my shots.

Now, that’s a pretty minor thing, all things considered. With that being said, the skills and little tricks that we bring to bear on our craft are a language unto themselves. They have their own vocabulary, their own syntax. As with your spoken/written vocabulary, the more you’ve got, the more options you also have to express yourself. Imagine yourself trying to express something, but you’ve forgotten the word or words that go with it. Your photography’s like that, as well… it becomes just a little bit harder to express the things you’d like to express without the right “stuff” with which to do it.

So. If you’ve picked up some new skill, be sure to dust it off every so often. Leave yourself a reminder, or go back over some of your older work. In either case, it’s a good way to ensure that your skills stay sharp (or at least don’t get too severely blunted) for when you need them later.

Rule 36: There Are No Shortcuts

Hamilton Gothic

Tell me if this has ever happened to you: let’s say you tell a story about someone you came across in your travels. It’s funny, totally random, and if you weren’t there when it happened, you’re not altogether sure you’d believe it yourself. And at the end of the story, the person to whom you’re telling it tells you you’re “lucky,” or that things like that would “only happen to you.”

Well, no… Things like that happen every day, and could happen probably to everybody. It isn’t like it takes all that much. It’s being present to the experience; taking the time to listen to someone, or see something, that someone else would just pass up. It’s that one extra detail you took a few seconds to zoom in on, or the person you chose to hear out when someone else would’ve walked away or just passed judgment.

Here’s the thing, though. Some people have an experience or two like that and they get to thinking they’re somehow special. If you’re one of those people, let me clue you in on something that’s likely to be disappointing: the universe didn’t conspire to give you that shot or that experience. Your wishing about it didn’t make it so; your doing it did. Odds are better than even that all that stuff would’ve been there whether you’d been or not. The point is, you got your ass up off the sofa, went out, met it, and got its photo. Cause and effect is a matter, much of the time, of being there. Whether we’re creating the circumstances or just happening across them, the point is the preparedness and the action.

I bring this up because a few days ago while working on an unrelated thing, I came across a truly miraculous system that’s just guaranteed to make you thousands of dollars on your photography, with practically no effort. </sarcasm>  All you have to do, with this and other, similar, “systems” is plunk down an untold (well, it’s probably told, but I was too cynical to click through) sum of money, sit back in your pajamas, and watch the money roll in. The same faulty reasoning, in short, that underpins everything from The Secret to the Prosperity Gospel.

I’m calling bullshit.

There is no system, no secret. You want a foolproof system? Learn hard, then work hard, then when you think you’re done, work and learn some more. Luck? You make your own. Karma? Neither good nor bad. It’s simple cause and effect. Things happen — you get, or miss, the shot, have an awesome conversation, run into someone you haven’t seen in a decade or two — because your actions set in motion the things that made them possible. Act, and things happen based on those actions. Take no action, get no results. It’s that simple.

Nobody’s going to tell you everything they know. On one hand, it’s impossible. Unless it’s something that’s really simple (how to do one very small thing with a discrete number of steps), the process itself doesn’t lend itself to teaching every last little thing. You’re always forgetting things, leaving things out. And there’s that pesky habit most of us have, if we’re any good, of always learning, always pusing back at the boundries of our ignorance; we know we don’t know everything, but we’re damned if we’re not going to know just a bit more today than we did yesterday. It’s the difference between teaching someone how to make rice pudding and teaching them how to be a chef; those cookbooks and culinary classes leave out a hell of a lot more than they include.

On the other hand, some people wouldn’t tell you all they knew even if they could; to them, knowledge is not only power but also profit. if they told you everything you needed to know all at once, what would they possibly sell you later? (never mind that if they were really that good, they wouldn’t worry, ’cause they’d know that in a year’s time they’d have added enough to their knowledge and skill set that they’d have new shit to sell anyway).

But both of those things end up obscuring a larger point: not for nothing is it said that experience is the best teacher. Anything that anyone can tell you, whether it’s Joe McNally, or Thom Hogan, or even little ol’ me, is just so many words. They’re starting points, signposts along the way. They’re pointing a way forward, but they’re the map, not even a vehicle and certainly not the destination. Our practice is the vehicle, and the destination’s always changing; we don’t always know it, and it’s not always what we think it is, either. Honor that process, and the work that goes with it. It may take longer than you expected, but if anyone asks, you’re taking the scenic route, and you’ll have some awesome photos to show from along the way.

But that’s just my $.02 worth. What’s yours?

Rule 35: Fail Better

 

Just ask this guy about the other 574 that got away

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. — Samuel Beckett

I hope you’re not afraid of photography, or of failing at photography. Let’s be real about this for a minute. Think of all the things you can screw up in your life: dinners, relationships, work projects… we could, between us both, probably come up with a list that ran into the hundreds of items, and that’s just the things we’ve already screwed up, not to even mention that which we haven’t yet gotten our hands on and turned to shit. A good many of them, if not most or all of them, have consequences a lot more weighty than your picture of a swan having blown highlights. Why is it, then, when we often wouldn’t give up on those more important things, we’re willing to bag it all when we’re faced with something relatively trivial?

And it’s not like you’re going to screw up once and be done with it. Even — no, especially — if you say, “Well, I’m never going to do that again,” you’re going to. And you’re going to screw it up. Not even the same way. With our wonderful creativity comes a propensity for finding new, and ever more creative, ways to fuck up. Life’s like that, and photography isn’t exempt from it, either.

Be encouraged.

There’s an adage in public speaking, but I think it holds true elsewhere as well: your audience is rooting for you. They want you to succeed, and will be with you no matter how far short your efforts fall. People talk all the time, but it’s not the same as putting yourself out there publicly; for that reason, many people can’t imagine speaking in public. Similarly, people take photos all the time, but I don’t know that many of them do it as though it matters, or as if there’s anything at stake. Granted, it’s not something of earth-shaking importance if we’re going to be honest about it. But if it matters to you — matters enough that you want to do it well, matters enough that you want it to matter beyond just a simple image on a screen or a piece of paper — that fear of failure is always an ingredient in the process.

Taken by itself, there’s nothing wrong with that fear. Like anything else, it’s what you do with it that makes it a good or bad thing. If you let it paralyze you, then, yeah, it’s not a great thing to have around. If, on the other hand, you allow it to motivate you to do something more than you did the day before… well, now you’re onto something. That’s also when your art really begins to resonate with other people beyond the level of being something pretty that goes on your wall or in your stereo. We may not understand color theory, or the how and why of a chord change that turns your heart to jelly, but all of us, on some level, recognize what it is to try, and to fail… and to get back up again, to try and keep trying, ’til what’s left is still far short of perfection, but just as far from those earlier, worse failures.

The best part (even though it often doesn’t feel that way at the time) is that those failures are a good thing. The only way not to fail, after all, is to do nothing. To risk nothing, and therefore to gain nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. The upshot of all this failure, on the other hand, is that we keep getting closer — sometimes frustratingly so, with the goal just as frustratingly just out of reach — to what we wanted, needed, or just intended to do. What you see now as failure isn’t; it’s just part of the process, a point on your learning curve. Learn from it, grow in it, and see it as a beginning or a continuing rather than an end. Once you’ve stopped — stopped learning, doing, growning, trying — then, and only then, have you failed.

Rule 34: Take Your Frustrations In Stride

When life hands you lemons, just Photoshop 'em 'til they look funky.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time during the last few days going through past photos, trying to organize the tens of thousands I’ve taken to a degree that I can actually find stuff later, and also so that I can begin to delete some of the stuff that I will not ever have any use for in the future. I’ve had days — and you probably have, too, if you have any standards to speak of — when I’ve come back from a day of shooting, looked over it, and decided that the whole lot of it was crap from start to finish.

Now that I’ve had the chance to go back to some of these shots — in some cases, a few years after taking the photos — I realize that there are times I was right. The shots were every bit as bad as I’d thought or feared at the time. More often than not, though, there’ve been shots even from those bad days that have been worth keeping, even if I didn’t think so at the time.

As I’ve written about previously, we need to approach our own work with the same critical eye with which we’d approach anyone else’s. We also need to be realistic about it, though. For starters, we’re not always going to be shooting in ideal, controlled environments. It’s easy, when we have the luxury of freezing moments in time, to forget that neither that moment nor the “artifact” that resulted from it were in some way immutable, and just as easy to be frustrated when the results weren’t what we expected or wanted.

Try a little mental exercise. Pick something, anything, random in your field of vision. It could be anything… a cloud, a cat, your breakfast, a road sign. Now, let’s think about this a second. How’d that thing come to be and acquire its thingness? It wasn’t always what it is now. Whatever it is — thunderhead, Fluffy, jelly donut — it had to be brought into being. Over time, it will change, whether it’s your kitten going gray (get your mind out of the gutter), the cloud letting out its rain, the jelly donut going stale if it’s left to sit for too long. With even more time, it will cease to be. The cloud will dissapate, the sign will rust away, and you’ll scarf down that jelly donut (not necessarily in that order).

Now think about your frustrations in shooting. If everything else changes, that will too. Count on it. It wasn’t always what it is now; you probably weren’t frustrated when you picked up your camera this morning; something gave rise to your frustration, whether it’s your photos not turning out like you expected, or a silly mistake you’ve made. That’s okay; like your subject, your lighting, and everything else, it will also fade, change, and slip into nothingness. Nothing lasts. Everything changes. That can be a bit scary at first, in life as in photography. But really, that’s the single best bit of news you’ve gotten all day. Sure, some good things will pass (some experiences, like some shots, really are only once in a lifetime), but that also means that the bad stuff, all the negative feelings, all our halting attempts at learning, all the clumsy results, and nearly everything else, has not always been nor will it remain what it is.

When all else fails, remember that a bad day of photography is still better than a good day at the office. And if photography is your day at the office, it’s time to rethink your approach, and attitude, toward your craft. In any case, cut yourself, and your work, some slack, lest you talk yourself out of keeping it up and always getting better.

We should not complain about impermanence, because without impermanence, nothing is possible. — Thich Nhat Hanh