On fearless

This is a gutless world. One that’s going to tell you how to make your money, how to purchase your goods, and how to be the person you need to be to make your money and purchase your goods. Too much of it is about distrust. About the loss of faith in who we are and who we serve. It favors the creation of the sellable over creation. Don Henley said it best in Hotel California. You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.

Serving your client is the job, but it’s not a get out of jail free pass. Get it right, but know it’s where you begin, not end. The wedding day may be no day to screw around. But every day is a day to play. Bring yourself into the fold. Experiment. Challenge. Question. Do not factor you out of the equation. Only when you fully engage the process as yourself can you give your very best. And if you do find yourself withholding your best to keep your clients happy, find different clients.

When you hide what you value, you confine yourself to a cycle of doubt that shuts down your creative brain. That’s a greater sacrifice than anyone can sustain. Don’t shoot for accolade, admiration, or appreciation. If a client loves every one of the shots you took, you probably didn’t shoot enough. Be willing to shoot what others will hate. You can decide on the edit later, but until you go beyond what people love, you’ll never know how much they can really love.

Be fearless.

The problem with this industry is that fearless doesn’t mean fearless. It means “taking impressive pictures that show an uncommon level of skill.” The lexicon of the fearless movement is all too familiar. Pictures cut off at the mouth on down. Cut off at the chest on up. People made small in conspicuously beautiful landscapes. Abundant negative space, striking light, frames within frames, reflection upon reflection, unusual events, unusual angles, general oddities, exaggerated expression, crying, and, of course, children.

Fearless images are flamboyant, to be sure. Technically sound, often impressive, sometimes powerful, other times not, they are rarely fearless. If you take a shot, and it’s that cool or that impressive, it’s just not that scary to shoot it or show it. And you can be damn sure it’s been done before and done a lot, or else you wouldn’t be secure in the fact it’s that cool or impressive.

True fearlessness counts. It’s where you grow. It is personal and intimate and delicate. It is the murky cross section of belief and individuality, and when we go there, we discover who we are. No answer is more important, and the more we peel away the layers of craft from our images, the more we have to fortify them with meaning. Fearlessness forces us to find the confidence to believe in something and decide what really matters.

Skill and drama and technique have their place. But the fight for attention is supercharged and overheated and the fight for self is whisper quiet. We need to turn down the volume and let ourselves breathe. The shorthand is too familiar, whether your images are fearless or editorial or documentary or fine art. There’s the vertical 645 shot of the bride from above, the couple under the tree, the landscape with the video light at dusk, the expressionless stare of the handholding couple – each a reference to a sub-culture that lets people know we’re in on it and part of it. But we are drowning in sameness.

Fearless is never sameness. No image whose purpose is to show quality can have quality. As Paul Rand said, “A work of art is realized when form and content are indistinguishable.” Content must be pursued through form. And form must be pursued for content. And once form is pursued for itself, the art is lost. In other words, now that we know what fearless is, it’s time to ask what fearless is not.

Fearless is to live without precedent. It isn’t championing what you know will work. It’s acting in faith when you don’t. It’s daring to be plain, simple, or even flawed. A belief that technically wrong should never be put down if its emotionally right. Fearless is deference to belief. It’s not shooting what only the top 5%, 2%, or 1% could. It’s shooting what only you would. Ability is at its most valuable when it liberates you from the need to use it. We are infinite when we stop showing how good we are and simply show who we are.

Photography is a relentlessly human activity. It is a fight for the durable in the face of the temporal. A picture doesn’t just tell a story, document a moment, or show something. It reassembles the world in a way our hearts feel and our minds see. It is a belief in living so powerful it extends permanently into the ether of the consciousness. Every picture becomes a part of us. And if the price of admission seems unrealistic and out of reach with everyday life pounding on the door, it’s certainly better than the alternative. Because when you do can face fear down and move forward in a way only you know how, you’ll never have to check out, and you’ll never have to leave.