crisis of confidence

S

skeletron

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What do you do when you've looked back over your past work (10 years worth for me) and everything you see leaves you cold?

I still love taking photos and working them into finished pieces. But, jeez, if all I'm churning out is mediocre crap, then what's the point? There are hundreds of thousands of people doing that already.

What the hell do you do if all you have is chaff and no wheat?
 
That is a good question. Maybe it's like writers block. Noo, maybe not. Maybe you should quit for a while and just see how you feel. I tried to quit, but could not. So I just keep taking photos. Well, I enjoy it a lot.
 
When I got my first camera (fairly recently), I started by going out into the woods, walking through marsh, or on the borders of large, beautiful lakes. Know what I realized? I hate that sh*t. I don’t know what the hell I was doing walking through swamps.

I looked at my pictures, and though many of them were fine from a technical standpoint, they did nothing for me. Deleted all the pictures and took a trip to Newark (NJ). Took photographs of people I found interesting. Sold the Nikon shortly thereafter and am now awaiting the arrival of my new rangefinder (M6).

You’ve been in photography much longer than I have. I’m sure you’ve figured out what you like to take pictures of. But it can be more subtle than that. I think people that are often overly critical of their work find that they are adhering to other people’s standards of what good and bad photography is. If you like photographing business cards, and that's art for you, then do that.

Experiment if necessary. Take pictures of things you would not normally take, and see if that catches.
 
If you have been doing the same stuff for 10 years, and you don't like the results, do something else. Maybe jsut change your typical subject matter, film type, or gear. I used to shoot transparency film of nature subjects, landscapes, forest, ponds, plants, etc. After a while, it got boring so I switched to B+W film and more people and urban subjects. Change it up, to change your results.
 
Try it until you do like it.

Many artist/poets hate their old work, or at least lose interest in it. We do change over the years.
 
"I looked at my pictures, and though many of them were fine from a technical standpoint, they did nothing for me. Deleted all the pictures and took a trip to Newark (NJ)."

And probably deleted an unrecognized masterpiece!

I've gone through this same crisis several times and find that a short break and then a completely different direction (amateur/pro, street/studio, one lens/several lenses) helps.
 
Skeletron, I know where you are coming from. I photographed seriously from around 1975 to around 1985 when I came to the realization that there were photographers who were orders of magnitude more talented than me. And that I was never going to be what they were no matter how hard I worked simply because they had talent that I did not. I was in my early 40's, rapidly moving upward in my job career and could not accept the concept of some future artistic limitations. I quit photography entirely, sold my cameras and darkroom, threw away all my negs and prints and begin water skiing competitively.

Around 2000, I bought a camera and slowly got back into serious photography. While I believe I am much more talented than I was previously, that chasm between the really talented photographers and me is as wide as it ever was. Now I can deal with it. I can accept the fact that I am not going to be the next Walker Evans, Robert Frank, or Cartier-Bresson. I just have my place and am satisfied with it, where ever it may be. Just like I have accepted that fact that I am not going to be the CFO of a Fortune 500 company.

You should take great solace that you have progressed to the point where you can differentiate wheat and chaff. That alone puts you in the top tier. Not the top of the top tier but certainly ahead of most photographers who derive great satisfaction for creating the mundane.

On a simplistic practical note: make sure you are creating a cohesive body of work. It is just too easy to have a bunch of unrelated "pretty good" photos. But a series of photos that work together to tell a story do much better, even if each photo individually is just "pretty good". Look at any of the respected photographers work and realize they all display something in a cohesive body of work.
 
i am finding this a very interesting thread, a very common quandary all artists go through, whether professional or part-timers...kind of a photographic post-natal creative depression... i am slowly settling into semi-retirement (63) from the the point of view i don't have to always be chasing the dollar and can pick and choose my jobs knowing the pension is there as my cushion. after just short of 50 years behind a camera (for a living) i have a few boxes of negatives and trannies, etc, not to mention digital files. i have been going through them mostly to scan the negs so i might sit with a coffee or a wine and look back over the years at what i did for money and what i did for fun...and what i am doing now.

but it hit me, what's the use of just printing them out and stacking the prints somewhere, framing maybe a couple for the hallway or friends who really might not want them in the first place but don't know how to tell you they don't suit their taste...stacks of pics are the same as boxes of negs...?! then i discovered the self-publishing one-off glossy books you can put your photos in. so i've been categorising my images by decade or genre or event and composing them in the on-line photobook formats that are popping up more and more...and specialist shops provide this service as well.

what this does is, makes me look at the good photos and compile them into volumes. you choose alocal or on-line provider that you like, download their software, choose a format and price range, compose your book, upload it and in a week or so you have a new coffee table book.

so, boxes of negs, stacks of prints are now piles of coffee table books. but at least the books help sort out the good from the bad AND it helps you decide on what is representative of your photographic skills and eye.

it is a cheap way of getting feedback, makes you look at your work in a different light and only cost a few nights playing and maybe $50 plus or minus.

i've been shooting street across america, europe and australia since the 1960s but my preferred subject is the nude. so my photos from the 60s and 70s are an archive of life as it was then, the look of people, clothes, urban landscapes, lifestyles. they are now in books which represent those periods and i'm still sorting more. friends look at them and make comments. i have forty years of nudes that have hung in galleries and made their ways to people's homes but when i showed the first book of nudes to my main gallery they scoffed it up and now take orders for a limited edition run of each if i sign the books. the public will buy books faster than they will buy a print. a print of a nude is sometimes hard to justify hanging on a wall, at times...but a book is different and you can tuck it away when someone comes over who might create a fuss with a glistening sepia torso hanging across from the sofa they are sitting on...

what this all says is, you will always question the worth of your work, that means you care. this self-publishing mechanism works for me to reinforce my feeling that i am doing something right. selling a picture doesn't mean it is necessarily of value but hearing what people have to say about it is. as for my other volumes of documented photos from decades past, it is not about selling the books, it is about listening to what people have to say. and a book is a different kind of credibility than a hanging print, in my opinion...both valid to their respective audiences.

-dd
 
You see.. the issue we have, as photographers and as people (but mostly as photographers) is that we live in the past.

The moment we snap a photo, regardless of what it is, that moment, that unique distinct portion of time, is gone. So we look back and think "Why didn't I wait a half second longer" or "Maybe I shouldn't have hit the shutter at all". This is the bane of our existence, the torment that we all must adhere to and live by.

BUT

There are many opportunities when we free ourselves from the shackles that bind us to believing that our past is the only thing that defines us. Forget about what has happened, and begin to dream and imagine what CAN happen. What's done is done, it's gone, it's finished, it cannot be revived, but BELIEVE that there is hope in the future, in all your POTENTIAL photographs, and all your POTENTIAL moments in life and you'll soon realize that you won't care "as much" with respect to what's behind you.. sure you'll still have plenty of photos where you'll look at them and you'll say "meh.. none of these appeal to me or anyone else" but you'll open yourself to the possibility of capturing that one unique moment that will make YOU happy.. and yes.. in the end.. the photo has to make YOU feel like a young child on his/her birthday... the excitement, the thrill, the joy, the feeling that "you've arrived"...enough to forget all the the images that have come before it; THAT image will be the one that will free you .. and make you whole.. and, in the end, make all those sh*tty images worth the money spent on the film/camera/lenses/etc.

If you're truly lucky.. you'll have many of those moments in your life....

So..

Yes..

Don't give up.. or give in.. keep clicking....

Cheers,
Dave
 
FrankS said:
If you have been doing the same stuff for 10 years, and you don't like the results, do something else. Maybe jsut change your typical subject matter, film type, or gear. I used to shoot transparency film of nature subjects, landscapes, forest, ponds, plants, etc. After a while, it got boring so I switched to B+W film and more people and urban subjects. Change it up, to change your results.
Click to expand...

IAWTC!


:) somecanuckchick
 
Your opinion does not count. You are biased, and sound like you do not like yourself very much at this point in time.

What do others think of your work?



on the side...

IAWTC: I Agree With The Comment?

or I Always Want To Cry? (I'm so sensitive, a sensitive male of the 90s.)
 
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I'm still not there, yet, but what changed it for me is/was consistency. Get good and comfortable with one film, one developer, and maybe even one camera, and God forbid one lens. Don't try to branch out until you have exactly what you want. You will then be able to repeat your results. At this point you will become picky about just how much contrast is in a scene, and what to do about it. I find it difficult to develop a roll of 35 and choose which contrast levels I should develop for, but it is a little easier with 120. Just keep going, establish your 'look.' I'm not sure I have yet but I'm still trying.
 
One's creative vision has to grow over time, or else you're creatively dead. Thus, to be dissatisfied with one's past work is a good sign, that your vision is continuing to grow. That is a good thing. Analyze, critique, and decide in what areas you need to change, grow or improve your skills and vision.

The great thing about having the photo bug is that you don't have to decide you're an "artist" (whatever the heck that means) to be motivated to continue shooting. Even if you're a realist and know you're not the next Ansel or Edward, it's just the intrinsic, inner drive to create, almost despite ourselves, that drives us on. We do it because we can't help not to.

~Joe

I Ate Wednesday's Tuna Casserole
 
The most liberating thing about no longer having to shoot for clients to pay the bills is when you realize that it doesn't matter one bit what others think of your work. Now I can shoot what I want when I feel like it, and even if the camera is hanging from my shoulder I don't have to use it!

I've been going through my old stuff, some going back to the early sixties, printing it up and posting it on my blog, writing about the who, what, where, when, and why, and mixing it in with more recent photos too. What I've noticed is an overall consistancy of style over nearly half a century. There's also a lot of crap there, stuff that wasn't all that great, but now has taken on historical interest, perhaps a nobody who became a well known person or an historic building that got torn down. Most of all, though, it's an autobiographical record of my journey through life. http://thepriceofsilver.blogspot.com
 
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