There’s a special moment after every wedding I shoot. It’s before I do the edit, before I do the blog, before I tone and process, when all my pictures are raw memories of RAW files, waiting to become something more, but fully formed in concept and execution. Nothing can be changed now. It is before I can see my favorite one hundred pictures, before I lay them out to see them as a collection, and when they are just random, singular images. I am fundamentally unhappy with them.
This happens every wedding I shoot. Because, as I shoot, two things have become clear to me over the years. The first is that it will always be alright. That they are never so bad they are unpresentable. That, in fact, they are nearly always better than I could have achieved one a year prior. And the second is that they are always unsatisfactory. There is always something I could have done better. There is always an imperfect point in the day. And there is always a better solution an arm’s length away, but nearly within my grasp. I reach for it, a child on a merry-go-round who can’t quite grab the ring.
What happens next is never the same. Some weeks, complacency returns as I settle into the images and piece them together. I want to hold on, but my epic struggle from the weekend prior fades as I parse through the results, ignoring the bad, only seeing the good. Lightroom has a wonderful way of letting you forget about all of those unstarred, unflagged images. Some of the images jump off the screen and surprise me. Better than I thought. I post them, fully rendered, nicely presented, and generally pleasing. I can move into the rest of the week, and that pang of dissatisfaction leaves. I feel better about the person I am. Those are the bad weeks.
But there are the good ones, too. The ones where I can hold on a little longer. Where, before I hit Photoshop, before the rapture of toning takes its toll on me and pulls me into the technical wonderland that is modern photography, there are those weeks where I manage to force myself to step into my head and up to my bookshelf and dig in. Where I let myself look back at the day only with my mind’s eye, without the aid of Photo Mechanic or any digital device. I run through the day, and I just think. I dwell. I let it run its course and consider what I’d do differently. And there are always so many things. Those are the best of times.
As business owners, we worry too much about perspiration and too little about inspiration. It’s the wrong sort of motivation. Whether it’s a brilliant idea or a desperate need to act on something, too often, we defer to necessity instead of desire. Necessity will call on us relentlessly. There is nothing you can do to stop it. Is there really any concern that we’ll ever forget about our backlogs? But we can easily let inspiration slip away. It comes at the most inopportune times, after all. In the middle of dinner, while we’re outside on a walk, or as we’re about to sleep. We say we’ll come back to it, but we don’t. We can’t.
So seize it. Protect the moments of inspiration by acting on them right then and there. Remember, you don’t have to solve world hunger. If you have some problem you want to work out, just give it enough time to crystallize. Sometimes, 10 minutes is enough. You want to create something tangible enough that you can come back to it later. Plant a seed. Water it next time the need comes along, or when you really have some time. If you can squeeze out the time to really let the juices flow, even better yet.
If you’re not going where you want, the problem isn’t likely a lack of inspiration. Great ideas come up left and right. You’re probably not utilizing them. Forget the “creative space” thing. Forget waiting for time to recharge. It doesn’t happen that way. You don’t just sit down with 8 hours to spare and jump right into it, unless you’ve got something you really want to hash out ahead of time. Instead, you just wind up putting pressure on yourself to be creative, and you feel like a failure.
Don’t stall. Pull out that book, write down that idea, research that image, or work on that business plan. Enjoy the interruption. It is only in the here and now that the motivation lives and breathes. And the more your work on it, the more you get. After all, inspiration is the thing that gives us all a fighting chance. It will steer us when the destination is so vaguely distant, we barely even know it’s there. No one knows where it will take us, but if we ignore it, we’re sure to go nowhere.
I seem to always go through this process in which I hate my images and especially since I am just starting, I tend to do things in a practiced, methodical manner. And my own creativity and inspiration has a tendency to get lost – I feel like this post is a good reminder that I can fit the creativity in, even if I have to plan it.
Thanks for this blog, I really love it and find it extremely helpful.
I enjoy every single one of your posts, often nodding my head whilst reading it, or feeling a wash of inspiration come over me – often times both! This post rings so true, especially as I sit here downloading cards from one of the most amazing weddings, and I’m thinking, “If only I had done this…” and “If only I had thought of that…” I will take heed from this post and spend a little more time thinking about how I can use these moments of self flagellation to make myself a better photographer.