Growing as an artist isn’t always fun. But being the best artist you can may require you to rely on growing pains to reach your full potential.
An interesting phenomenon has occurred during most of my photo shoots over the last year. This is not the first time this has happened in my life. And it won’t be the last. The phenomenon itself is difficult to explain. Not particularly good nor bad. Just a fact. But at some point, it seemed to me all of my recent photo shoots, that I found myself extremely aggrieved. Not on topic. Not at the customer. Not even really myself. Rather, it was just a general incident that happened to me during filming. A feeling that I want more of.
Now, to be clear, I have no qualms about the end result. Oddly enough, I’m happier than ever with what I’m creating. In fact, more and more times I leave the scene with a sour expression only to find myself hours later sitting in front of the final images and thinking, “wow, those images are actually pretty good” , is becoming more and more a thing to me. It’s almost like I seem to feel less satisfied on set, the more satisfied I am with the end result.
It was a bit of a strange feeling to me. I’m a pretty laid back person, always getting ready and leaving. I like to go with the flow, embrace what life has to offer and make lemonade from lemons. So feeling frustrated, beyond the basic logistical hurdles of photography, is often not my way. However, it has happened so many times so far that I have no choice but to test the sensations to try to gauge what it means. Am I photographing the wrong subject? Am I missing something technically? Have I stopped loving photography? Does it eventually become a job?
The answers to the first two questions may vary with the wind. But, fortunately, the answer to the second set of questions is no. I still love photography. And, while that’s how I make a living, I don’t think it could just be a job for me. And it’s this last thing that I think contributes to my recent wave of setbacks.
Yes, photography is my job. Yes, I am a commercial photographer. This means that much of my delegated work is done with the client team, advertising agency, and a host of other collaborators on camera and off. So there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and a job isn’t necessarily always a matter of mine to satisfy all my creative whims. Thankfully, I took care at the start of my career to create a niche for myself to attract the kind of client that pays for what I do. I never spent too much time trying to adapt my shooting style to the market. That tends to simply make one person’s work a copy of others. And carbon copies are easily replaceable. Instead, I’ve built my career by creating the kind of work I’m passionate about, regardless of salary, and focusing my marketing efforts on clients who will appreciate my approach. near there.
The result has been a meaningful career where I take as much pride in the images I create as an artist as I take pride in running a profitable business as an entrepreneur. core. I rarely feel like I’m doing it for the money. In fact, maybe sometimes I should do more work just for the money. My accountant wants that. But, instead, a long time ago, I learned that what really matters most to me is that I’m happy with art. I don’t overlook that we all need to eat. But, when it comes to money, as they say, you can’t take it with you. On the other hand, the art you create can last long after your years. All of which to say no, photography has become more than just a job for me.
So why is the frustration growing? Quite simply, I think it’s my nature, to always put art first, that both got me where I am and is driving me crazy right now.
Allow me to take a short detour to explain. Think for a moment about your parents or anyone from the previous generation really. If you don’t specify, there’s a pretty good chance that they have at least one or two strong convictions that you find objectionable. Maybe when you’re young, that doesn’t seem so extreme. But as they get older, they seem to have stuck their heels in one opinion or another, and absolutely nothing you say will make them leave that particular soapbox. This is not the only one. Each succeeding generation will have fundamental divisions from the one that preceded it. Surely your parents felt the same way about your grandparents. And for the time being, you might think it’s just them, once you start getting older, things can turn out in a whole new way.
You will also find yourself becoming more and more consistent with particular points of view. After all, as you age, you have more and more personal experience to back up your point, which seems to just confirm that you are absolutely right and those who disagree are completely wrong. This does not mean that you are, in fact, right about being right. It’s just that our brains have a funny way of tricking us into working out facts from beliefs. This does not make us bad people. It is part of human nature. And, as long as we take the time to comprehensively re-examine our beliefs over time, that’s a healthy part of increasing our wisdom as we mature.
What does this have to do with developing one’s perspective as an artist? Well, one of the best parts of growing up is cultivating what you believe in. Browse through the limitless aspects of life and find out which aspects are most important to you. Conversely, this process results in you also cutting out certain elements of your life from the depth of your focus. Like a photograph, it is impossible to focus on everything everywhere at once. You need to figure out where you want to look. And, as we refine our creative eye, we often find our depth of focus shrinking as we narrow our gaze to what sets our hearts on fire.
That’s natural. And, I think this natural selection is part of the reason why photography has started to look a little different for me in recent years. Quite simply, I want my image now more than what I did 5 years ago. I have a clearer view of what I feel good about my work, and there is an increasing emphasis on bringing the images I create to elevate that particular vision.
It’s not that I suddenly think that all the pictures I’ve taken in the past are completely trash. I like those too. I just don’t have a special need to recreate them. So while I might have been happy to go home with some kind of image a few years ago. Now, I find my hobby much more special. Predictably, these newer tastes are harder to produce art and more demanding of me as an artist. If you want more, you have to give more. There are two ways about it.
So that means each capture just takes a little longer to generate. Each shoot takes just a moment to plan. Every time I review an image I’ve created, I look at it with a much more critical eye. I admit, it’s not nearly as much fun as it used to be. But then I saw the end result and it was indisputable that it was much better than I could have imagined.
Now, it’s clear that this growing ambition and payoff is relative to my creative journey. This story is not intended to suggest that I have finished the article or that I have reached some higher level of consciousness as an artist. Instead, you have to admit that part of growing as an artist is constant self-reflection about your own art. It’s finding what it is about your work that is giving you meaning. It continues to track your ever-evolving passions as your career continues to evolve. Humanity continued to evolve from the day we were born until our last days on Earth. As an artist, you will always continue to grow. Or, at least, that should be your goal. And just as the knee pains that accompanied my growth spurt in middle school, sometimes the progress was accompanied by growing pains. But, like most things in life, there is often a big reward on the other side of pain.
