Why Inspiration in Photography is for Losers

February 26th 2023

As I sat in front of the closed Battle for Eire ride at Busch Gardens Williamsburg and scrolled on my phone, looking at who knows what unimportant Internet garbage, my mind was screaming at me. Why was I wasting my time on this unimportant stuff that would be there after the park closed? Why was I sitting there with my camera in my hand not doing anything when one of the most beautiful parks in the country was waiting for me to take pictures of it? Why was I not taking advantage of the rapidly passing day, one day closer to my vacation ending and heading home to my apartment thousands of miles away?

Although I felt this most acutely at BGW that day, I have fallen into this trap so many times. I’ll bring a bunch of camera gear and have these grand plans in my head for all the amazing shots I’m going to get, stuff I’m going to be able to blow up and put on my wall. But time will go by and I’ll either leave my camera at the hotel or carry it with me and maybe get 15 total shots. Where is the disconnect between my hopes and dreams and reality? And why can’t I just get inspiration?

My Greatest Fear

Like most of you all, I’m my own worst critic. I have my internal expectations for how I want my photography sessions to go, for how I want the images to turn out and how much I want to get done. Those plans are perfect in my head but they’re impossible. And my brain subconsciously realizes that and to protect my ego and self conception, it shuts me down from even starting. After all, I only didn’t get these perfect images because I wasn’t trying! If I actually tried, I could 100% get it perfect, right?

That’s copium of the highest degree but a seductive one. And a drug that plagues me (and many others) across all creative endeavors. That software project that I want to do? Or that Youtube video I want to make? Well it won’t be perfect like it is in my head so I better shut down my brain from doing it to protect myself from the realization that I’m not perfect!

How I Try to Move Past It

Do you want to know the one secret that will almost certainly make you a better photographer and get those shots you’ve been dreaming of? Take pictures. Yep, that’s it, that’s the One Weird Trick. All kidding aside, there is no secret, there’s nothing about inspiration or productivity when it comes to photography that you don’t know but you need to know. The only thing that stands between you and getting better as a photographer is effort and putting in the work and trying.

There’s an old, probably apocryphal, story that goes something like this: a pottery teacher decides to run an experiment with their class and divides the class up into two groups. The groups will be graded on their pottery in different ways. One group can work all semester on making one pot and they will be graded solely on the quality of that pot. The other group, on the other hand, is not graded on quality at all, instead they’re graded on quantity. If you make 50+ different pots you get an A, 40 for a B and so on. The semester goes on and at the end of the semester the teacher is shocked to see that the quantity group’s best pots far exceed the quality group’s pots. The group that just showed up and put some effort in without seeking perfection were willing to experiment and try new things enough to learn and ironically, get closer to perfection than the group tasked with it.

The same is with us and photographers. Sometimes you’re so inspired you just can’t wait to get out there and shoot, other days you can’t. It doesn’t matter. If you want to get better, you need to just get started. Every single time I just get started I can’t stop and it gets easier.

My trick for myself is telling myself just to go get pictures of one ride (in the BGW example, Finnegan’s Flyer) and then I can stop shooting and sit on my phone or whatever. Inevitably I end up shooting more. My inspiration a lot of time isn’t organic, it’s manufactured and that’s the secret I attribute a lot of my growth towards as a photographer.

Bringing this back full circle to my fear, the important other thing to keep in mind is that for a while (still in my case) your expectations will far outstrip your abilities. You’ll look at your pictures and know what you were going for a not quite have gotten it. It can be frustrating, especially when you’re at a park thousands of miles away that you don’t visit every weekend. But have some self-compassion and forgiveness too. You’re not perfect and you’re learning and you’re getting better.

Since that fateful day at BGW where it all sunk in for me, I’ve procrastinated still, yes but I have been a lot more confident about how to dig myself out of it. And I have some of my favorite images ever to show for it. Give it a try yourself and let me know how it works for you!

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