“Just embrace the wind” – I heard myself saying these words as I fired off a few more frames and she let her hair blow in front of her face.
We organized a shoot this weekend with a few of our favourite people and I hope to have a full post with the photos up later this week. As we walked and talked and took a few photos in the Beaches, I really felt like Dave and I were stepping into our own skin in a way. Starting out in the photography field has been a wonderful experience and I wouldn’t trade what I’m doing for anything. But it’s certainly also been filled with a lot of self doubt, challenges, steep learning curves, and mistakes along the way. It’s been rewarding, but it’s also been hard. And for someone with a sensitive soul like mine, at times it’s felt like I’ve been lost in a wilderness.
A fellow photog (who I respect, admire, and love his work so so much…) tweeted the other day that he was going wedding blog free on his RSS feed. People questioned him; he clarified – he was unsubscribing to more than a hundred blogs of wedding photographers that he had been following, with the challenge to others to do the same, remove the clutter, and to create something new. (Check out Jonathan Canlas’ work right here.) I’m subscribed to a select few blogs of my favourite photographers in the industry myself (and am still subscribed today) and so although I didn’t take up his challenge, what he said did strike a chord.
It made me think about how the more you look at other peoples’ work, the more you compare your stuff to theirs; the more you try to emulate what they’ve created; and the more you just wind up with a cheap imitation of the real thing – their thing. And when your images don’t match up to theirs, it hurts your soul. It’s like a pin popping a balloon. You feel like you’ve failed a little bit, like you’re not good enough. Been there.
Just starting out and not having a clue what to do, blogs of other photographers have helped me immensely to get a sense of direction and to determine what I like and what I don’t like. But this past weekend at our shoot, like I said before, I really felt like Dave and I just sort of stepped into our own skin. We created the shots we saw in our minds; we were the artists creating our own pieces of work. We weren’t trying to copy someone elses style or shots – we were creating our own. And it started us to thinking about what kinds of feelings we want our images to evoke when people look at them, and to actively go about creating those shots that will achieve that.
I was running this morning – a difficult run – and the wind suddenly picked up at hit me in the face just as I was nearing the peak of a hill. It was almost like “argh! I’m so tired and now this wind is slowing me down!” but at the same time “ahh. I’m so tired and now this wind feels so good against my face.” It’s like the wind challenges you when it whips up and you’re running into it, but at the same time it feels good. That’s where I feel like I’m at right now as a creative: feeling like I’m headed to the peak of the hill, challenged to create my own voice now and to see my vision come through in my work, and at the same time feeling so good when I see that my images are reflecting me and my vision; not someone elses. You can only fail when you’re trying to be someone else – you can’t fail at being you.
So friends, just embrace the wind, whatever the wind might be for you.
