To misquote a more insightful writer me, there are two kinds of artists: those who openly struggle with self-doubt and those who lie about it. It may be flippantly stated but that doesn't make it any less true. Unless you are terminally optimistic, or blessed with the kind of self-confidence reserved for the typical Oprah show expert, or you're on industrial strength Prozac, at some point in a long term creative project you're going to have to do battle with the black dog of self-doubt.
Why am I doing this?
Do I just suck, or do I really, really suck?
Am I just deluding myself and wasting everybody's time?
Why don't I just give up and see if there's anything good on TV?
Pieces of your work that you were happy with last week suddenly look second-rate and don't seem to measure up to your peers anymore. Picking up the camera seems more like work than pleasure and when you have a camera in your hands you can't find anything to shoot. When you do shoot something it never looks how you want it or everyone else seems to be able to do it better. You're in a slump. You're blocked. You're wrestling demons. You feel like you've lost your edge. You've lost your energy, your muse, your drive. Welcome to you're own artistic hell.
This self-doubt is painful but it is part of your artistic growth. You are not the same photographer that you were last year, last month or even last week and self-doubt can be a distressing side-effect of taking your art a little bit further. Your old work is not as bad as you think but this feeling may mean you're about to make a personal break-through.
Another consolation is that, although it feels like this pit of self-doubt is the loneliest place on the planet, every artist worth their salt has been through this before too … often more than once, but we have to get out of this place before we consider the horrible possibility of returning to it. So how do we break through and return to being productive? I say this without judgment but self-doubt is a very self-indulgent feeling. It results from being stuck in your own head. An artist must be self-aware, self-considered and reflective to work and grow but if you take it too far it can become self-destructive. To break on through you have to get out of your head; you should stop thinking and get back to doing.
This is easier said than done but there are things you can do to help your self achieve this, the most important of which is a change of environment. If you're stuck in a rut photographing the same things and places over and over, make the effort to try shooting somewhere or something else. If you have a home studio, leave it and your house and go for a walk. If you always shoot in your neighborhood drive somewhere else. If you always shoot in the day, shoot at night. If you shoot people, try landscapes. Change is a great distraction; you have to get out of your head to deal with what is going on in the here and now. You have to live in the moment and the moment is all a photographer has to work with.
But what if you can't make a literal change in your environment? What if you're committed to a studio project of there's some sort of protocol in your current project that you can't escape from? The best thing you could do is set up a side project and put your current work on hold for a period of time, but sometimes that's just not possible either. You can make changes to your environment that effect you but not your photography. For me that is often music. I usually work in quiet but if I become overly self-conscious working on something in a studio setting I find that if I crank up loud rock music it blows those thoughts out of my head – I begin to enjoy the music and forget about my block and start making pictures instinctively. I rarely walk around listening to my iPod but if I am blocked I will put in the earbuds and listen to music or podcasts while I'm walking around shooting and it does help me to forget about my funk.
It's good to be absolutely comfortable and instinctive with your goto camera and lens rig, however, if you need a distraction it can be of benefit to do something that makes you have to think about your equipment again. It can change your pace and rhythm enough to switch you focus from your block to the simple process of just making a picture. I will switch out photographic equipment; shoot with a compact point and shoot instead of a DSLR or use an old lens, or old camera I've half-forgotten how to use. If I can't do that I'll switch my lens into manual focus or use an exposure mode I don't normally use – anything I can do to stop me remembering how blocked I am and to get me thinking about just getting the camera to work and take a picture.
Beyond changing your shooting method there are other things you can do to restore your confidence about your work. You may be dissatisfied with the work you've been producing in the last few weeks but, if you go back far enough in your catalog you will find things that still make you proud or at least make you smile. If you spend a little time with your greatest hits it will help you focus on your strengths and what you want to pursue and achieve. This makes it the perfect time to make some new prints; do it right and mat, frame and hang them too. Make a Blurb book of a project you've already completed. Seeing your work in the flesh rather than in pixels adds instant gravitas to your pictures.
Take a look at your portfolio and switch out less satisfactory work with newer favorites. Create a DVD you can play on a TV when people ask to see your work. Put your portfolio photos in a easily accessible folder on your iPhone to show the curious. Create a new business card. Update your Flickr sets or your Lightroom albums – new themes and threads in your work may be emerging that you've been missing.
Beyond your own work get involved in the work of others. Seek out a mentor (admittedly that's easier said than done). Look at the new work of your peers or those you admire, and those doing the kind of work you wish you could produce. Critique other people's work on Flickr – you learn a lot through the process of critiquing others about what you already know, areas you are weaker, what you like and why. Watch documentaries and read biographies on photographers and other artists – they are not so different than you, just people trying to express themselves. Look through monographs and visit galleries but try not to see how you measure yourself against the work to see, rather find work that excites and inspires you to try to do something great.
Artistic blocks are part of the journey; if it were easy everyone would be doing it. Work through this without panicking and you will grow as an artist and produce better work as a result.
Good luck.
If this is your first year long picture-a-day project you might just have noticed that the task seemed to get much more difficult over the last few days. What's going on?
Remembering that project365 is a distance race not a sprint let's return to my favorite project365-as-a-marathon analogy. When you run a marathon there is so much preparation and effort in just getting to the start-line that, by the time you are warmed up and are hanging out in a that huge crowd waiting for the gun to fire it feels like a rock concert audience waiting for the band to come on – there is so much anticipation and nervous energy. When the race starts and that crowd first starts to jog and then gradually gains momentum you are running on pure adrenaline. For the first couple of miles you are at the heart of a huge crowd with spectators cheering the sight of thousands of people in motion, cameras capturing the event for local TV news and papers and you are just swept along, literally, in the moment. It can take a couple of miles for the pack to start to spread out and for you to find some space at which point the magnitude of what lies ahead can be daunting – you can go from feeling in the middle of the best party ever to feeling very alone in no time flat.
For the first mile or two you just run on the energy of the crowd but once that passes it's time to do the real work of the race; you're not really going to feel that camaraderie and adrenaline until the last couple of miles and, in this moment, the end of the race is a distant dream. It's time to find your space and your pace, to start listening to your body, tune out discomfort and concentrate on those things that will let you achieve your goals. Personally, I start to try to ignore the runners around me; if I get caught up in a group going to fast I will hit the wall – if I hang out with people going too slow I will get frustrated. I either look down at my feet and the ground for a mile or so or look over the heads of the other runners. I start to get a little chant, rhythm or song going in my head to run along to and I concentrate on form. At this point you are on your own.
Very similar things happen in the typical project365 group. January 1st the gun is fired and we're off! Many of us having been waiting for a long time for the project to begin and we're full of creative energy and good intentions. The first few days you can't wait to take and post your shots. You go to your project365 communities on Flickr and everyone is firing on all cylinders, posting amazing work and it's just too easy. Your fellow project365ers spend surplus energy commenting on tens of pictures everyday and participating in discussions and sub-projects; each image you post gets more views, comments and favorites than you are used to – perhaps a picture or two hits 'explore' – now we're motoring!
But, around day 20 you look around and the pack is spreading and thinning. A few participants have already fallen by the wayside, many are finding it hard to fit their picture-a-day into their busy lives. The free time of the holidays is gone – we're back to work with nothing interesting to shoot, certainly nothing explore-worthy. Your average views-per-image are half what they were last week so no one would notice if we just quit. What's the point of going on? It would be so easy to just stop; what are you going to do?
Like a marathon, it's time to do the work. You have to stop worrying about the others around you and get back to basics. Find a pace that works for you this means finding times that best work for you for making pictures and posting them. Make it as easy as possible for you to succeed – that means taking a camera everywhere so that there are no missed opportunities or excuses for not taking a shot. That means having a regular time for processing images and posting them – maybe over coffee when you first get up, during a coffee break at work or last thing before you go to bed, just make it a routine.
Pace means just plodding on forward one step at a time relentlessly. If you're running this race so your friends can see you, forget it. It's Sunday morning and they're all still in bed. Your fellow runners aren't really paying much attention to you, they have their own demons to wrestle with over the next 20-something miles. You have to run this race for you – to find out what you are capable of. Post your daily picture even if you are not totally happy with it, even if it is not half as good as the one you posted yesterday, or your buddy posted yesterday, even if it will get only 2 views and have no chance of hitting Explore. Just post picture after picture, relentlessly.
So get on pace, check your form, forget about the rest of the pack and do the work. You know you can make it to the end of this if you want to enough and you are relentless.
PS - Project 365 is not exactly the same as a New Year's resolution but they share a lot of the same characteristics. Ceratainly this post I read today seems to apply: Do You Make These 7 Mistakes When Trying to Keep Your New Year’s Resolution?
"So after the initial enthusiasm wanes it may not feel as that much fun anymore. It’s sort of enthusiasm backlash. This is the homeostasis kicking in within your mind (no matter if the goal/habit etc. is actually very positive for you). It’s a resistance to change to keep the system (you) stable. If you are simply aware of this being what it is - rather than a signal to give up - you can persevere, be patient and keep going more easily."
- "What do you shoot with?"
- "Are you Canon or Nikon?"
- "Have you tried the latest version of PS?"
- "What printer did you use to make these prints?"
- If you already have a camera that can make a good enough file stop reading magazines that are just trying to make you want to buy new equipment; instead visit a gallery or museum and get inspired. I have a decent camera but I refuse to buy into the idea that I need to buy something twice as expensive again to be taken seriously. There is no camera in the world that will make me a better photographer; I can only achieve that through applying myself to my work.
- Avoid conversations about gear; seak out conversations about art and artists.
- Spend as little time in PhotoShop as you can get away with. Avoid 'playing' with an image in PhotoShop. Instead look at the original file, previsualize what you would like the resulting file to look like, and work out the shortest route from one to the other.
- Stop studying lighting plans, HDR tutorials and ways to make your digital images look like they came out of a Lomo. Instead, study the history of photography, its movements, key players and iconic images.
- Don't be ashamed of shooting digital when everyone tells you that the 'real art' is made using film (or visa versa). It is a pissing match that has no point or end.
So you have enlisted in project365 - how hard can it be? All you have to do is pick up your camera once a day. How long does it take to make a picture? 1/125 of a second on average? That's only 1/10800000th of your day. This should be easy.
