Become a better photographer – Discover who you already are

Quote of the day: “Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

The older I get, the more I learn that all of my efforts to become something different than what I am are doomed to failure. In fact, any effort towards becoming something different than what I am is life deadening instead of life enhancing.

I’m going to say that again because it is so important…

Any effort towards becoming something different than what I am is life deadening instead of life enhancing.

I spent my youth and early adult years trying to fit in and prove I was worthy—of what I’m not sure. I wanted to be admired, liked, loved, respected, cool, popular, successful. So I adapted my persona to the people I was with.

But the more I worried about how I was perceived and the more that I hid the parts of myself that were “uncool”, the more distant I became from people and the less happy I was.

I have found something similar in my photography. When I try to make photographs that are “artistic” or “fine art” or like some other photographer’s work, there is something essential missing.

The photograph is dead. And it adds nothing to the world.

When I listen with my heart and connect with the beauty I see, I enter a zone of unconditional acceptance and regard. There is no external standard to measure my work against. There is no judgement. It is about the doing, not the result.

In those moments I experience such joy and flow, that time disappears. My subject (plant, person, landscape, or whatever I’m seeing) and I are connected in a moment of wholeness and beauty.

And while my reject ratio is almost the same (a vast majority of my photos are never used or shown), every so often I capture a little bit of the sacred mystery and beauty that speaks to me.

It might be a curve or the way the light glows or the amazing beauty of a simple flower. It might be the way the light makes a woman’s skin glow. It might be the mystery of the shadows around a woman’s curves. If I am seeing from my heart, the photo comes alive for me.

Go ahead. Notice your feelings. Discover who you are and express yourself through your art.