A lot’s been said of comfort and resistance and struggle and hardship. It’s a simple point, but a big one – if you want to make it, you have to risk failure. You have to pass through uncertainty and come out the other side. Only when you embrace failure do you embrace hope.
Uncertainty is not the enemy. It’s nothing more than not knowing. A mandatory point of departure for every new journey. And aren’t new journeys what it’s all for?
It goes something like this. We know safe. We know the feeling of comfort when something is within bounds. But life tests us. Constantly. There’s the photo you don’t know if you want to post. There’s the the sales pitch you were afraid to try. And those hands. What are your couples supposed to do with those damned, gangly appendages of theirs?
So let’s take posing as our example. Maybe you’re not sure what to do, and there are so many ways those hands can go wrong. So you tell your couple to put them exactly where you know they should be. Maybe wrapped around one another. Maybe resting on a groom’s chest or around a waist. And in doing so, you quell all the voices of fear, knowing you won’t go wrong.
That’s too much to give up.
Every time you choose not to cross a boundary, every time you stay with the familiar and fear the strange, you draw a line in the sand, telling your body: This place, I will not go. And like a child told where not to go, the more often you enforce these boundaries, the more power you give to the fear you feel. So the greatest of ironies is that only when you’ve had the most experience, can you feel the most fear. In other words, the time at which you’re the most capable and you should fear the least is the time we often fear the most.
Of course, we don’t call it that. By that time, our minds sift through it, and we justify our fears as beliefs or rules. See, beliefs grow around patterns, and when we stop, we create beliefs telling us to stop, and when we go, we create beliefs telling us to go. Either you come to believe you are limited or limitless. How much do you want to let fear matter?
Let’s go back to the portrait. The portrait is always about that delicate balance between the familiar and the strange. In fact, what isn’t about that balance? The familiar gives us comfort and resonance, while the strange defines individuality and creates excitement.
So you have that hand, a little twisted, not quite like you’ve ever seen it before. Maybe it’s floating. Maybe it’s sitting somewhere just a little different. Maybe it’s tense instead of relaxed. You just don’t know what to make of it. Use it. Play with it. Take it further and embrace the possibility. This is a point of departure. This is where the magic is. When you let it take you somewhere, you let yourself grow.
Uncertainty is the heart of exploration and growth. That we can feel it is a blessing. That our body can so finely sense when we have stepped to the edges of our craft and the borders of our selves, means we can always shape who we are and know when we have the potential to be more. What greater a gift could there be?
There’s a million places on this photography journey where fear and uncertainty has held me back. I’m slowly starting to come to terms with it and pushing on with things I wouldn’t normally do.
I’ve found the best way to overcome these worries is think back to where you were 1/2 years ago and how far you’ve come when you haven’t had a choice. Not having a choice is usually what pushes people into trying something new. However like you say above, once you’ve done it that first time it immediately becomes the norm and you see you shouldn’t have been uncertain in the first place and you can push on down other avenues.
It’s a way I’ve start to overcome my anxiety more and more. I know once I come out the other side I’ll be a better person for it.
Thanks for sharing that, Chris. I think looking back at where we were is always a great thing to do. So often, I look back and think, “What was I afraid of?” and it turned out to be nothing at all.
I’m making every effort I can to leave my comfort zone. I’ve made a lot of progress, which I try to see when I’m not busy cowering against the infinitely tall and dark storm clouds of uncertainty in front of me. I’m just pushing forwards to the calm eye of the storm, which I know probably doesn’t exist; there will always be further to go. It helps to take a break, look back at the distant landscape outside the storm’s reach, and look back at how far I’ve come.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that we don’t always have to go it alone. I’m trying to make my fortune (Ha! Figure of speech…) in commercial photography, and 99% of the educational photography photography on the internet is either portrait/wedding or absolute crap. Blogs like yours are phenomenal for dragging me through the darkest times, but when it comes to pricing and marketing and all the technical and business practices, commercial is a world of unknowns.
One of the most terrifying and demoralizing feelings for our social species is to feel alone and isolated. For too long, I’ve been trying to go it alone because I thought I could handle it, because I thought it was the best way to learn, and because my ego prevented me from starting from the bottom as an assistant. None of the people in my close circles could understand what I was doing or going through, none of them could help me personally or professionally, and I wasn’t wandering as much as flailing, failing, and hiding in my comfort zone (sequentially and, once I’d reenergized myself, repeatedly).
I recently started assisting commercial photographers, something I thought I’d never do. I now wonder why the practice of apprenticeships died in our economy, because they’re the best way to learn a trade. Not only am I learning (and getting paid for it), I’ve found people who truly understand what it’s like, and whom I can ask all the questions that nobody else can answer. I’m talking multiple-lightbulb-moments-over-lunch type stuff, the things I’ve needed to know for the past two years and have just been guessing at.
I believe the pendulum needs to swing back the other way. Online seminars and Facebook groups have their place (and not everybody learns the same way I do), but apprenticeships need to reenter this industry, and our economy. Public opinion needs to change. It’s not “paying your dues,” it’s about learning and community and mentors. Will it hurt innovation? Maybe, maybe not. Will it eliminate the struggle that makes us who we are? Certainly not. It’s still going to be incredibly hard to be a working photographer, and the journey will still test and challenge us and knock people out to easier jobs. But maybe it’ll eliminate some of the unnecessary misery and isolation.
Tyler – thank you for that! I so agree with you. Apprenticeships, mentorships – these are the best ways to share information, to break out of the isolation, and to learn not just how to do things, but why people do things, and to share that with others. I love what you wrote – that is so right on, and all the more so in this day, when so much of what we have to do is done alone.
Thanks for this wonderful article. One other thing is that almost all digital cameras come equipped with the zoom lens that permits more or less of any scene being included through ‘zooming’ in and out. Most of these changes in target length usually are reflected from the viewfinder and on big display screen at the back of the actual camera.
Because they did not take Chemistry in High school are College, and they are not that bright, smart that is.Reducing it will not help but stop polluting the air with Chemical waste from Plants, and Land fills and Clear cutting Forrest, polluting our rivers and stream, Off shore drilling . the list goes on of this that we can stop that would help the envoriment.
I worked as a assistant for 6 year in NYC started when I Went SVA. I learn so much! almost as four year of art School.
never stop learning! The digital age has change photography so much in the last 15 years!
Scott McSorley Photography
Oregon City,OR USA