Zack Arias, Self-doubt and Determination

Photography School3 Comments

Visual Psychology

Zack Arias doubts his abilities: Do you doubt your’s?

Photography is a lonely hobby. You can share your work online and be lauded by flickr friends or acquaintances on a dozen other websites, but essentially you are alone. It’s you behind the lens, it’s you composing the shot, setting the exposure, and tweaking the images during post-production.

You. One person.

Photography isn’t like football (soccer to our North American friends): There’s no team. There’s nobody there to save the day if your camera’s ISO setting is wrong, a teammate can’t help you with incorrect lighting or depth of field. Face it, photography isn’t a social hobby. Yes, you can talk about it in internet forums, read and comment on blogs, maybe even join a local photography club: None of that means you’re part of a team. Well, maybe a team of three: Me, myself and I.

For some people that’s the attraction: The “Look what I did, Mom!” factor. You did do it, without a lick of help. That blockbuster image was all you. That shining masterpiece, that one great photo in the thousands recorded on your CF and SD cards, pushes you forward, drives you to improving your photos, and learn more about photography.

Shooting the materpriece is great, but, it’s easy to get waylaid, side-tracked with self-doubt, on the way to photographic nirvana. Many togs look at their captures in Photoshop or Lightroom and think: These suck.

I suck. I should pawn my camera and lenses and start a new hobby, like cross-stitch or stamp collecting – something with tangible results.