What is your "Comfort Zone"?

[Roger Hicks]

I think that a lot of people who use the phrase 'comfort zone' probably don't have any real insight into themselves or realise what real discomfort can really mean. Likewise someone saying "think outside the square/box' often indicates to me that that person proably hasn't had an original thought in his life, if he uses a cliché like that, or isn't given to rigorous thought and method if all he can think of is some form of fantastical quantum leap.
What Brian Atherton alludes to is far more significant to me - an overcoming of inhibitions and a striving for new emotional challenges; to open up oneself to scrutiny and to give without receiving.

Exactly, especially the highlight.

Cheers,

R.

 

[John E Earley]

The tension mentioned by Bob and emraphoto touched something deep within me. I realize emotionally that "tension" can make or break an image but my overly rational mind wants to turn the tension slider down to zero. Engaging my left brain (or what's left of my brain) and "seeing emotionally" is, for me, getting outside of my "comfort zone."

 

[Lauffray]

i think we have a different understanding of what a comfort zone is. If you know what you're good at and stick to it, that's fine, but I find there's little growth in staying where one is. To me, simply sticking to what one knows how to do is akin to stagnation, it's boring.

I'm a little restless in real life too, one of those people who can't sit in one place for too long so maybe that explains it 😛

 

[dee]

I need to be surrounded by cameras especially those with continuity .
Being able to frame and edit an ASD diffused world through a camera and create snapshots which avoid people and invite building details is crucial to me .
By all means challenge yourself , but I don't think that the concept should be forced upon anyone .

 

[jsrockit]

I guess it depends if your comfort zone is a perceived to be rut or not. If it is working for you, then enjoy it while it works. If it isn't working for you, then that is the time to try a new approach. Sometimes you need to stay within a comfort zone in order to build a body of work until it is time to move on. Sometimes, in other areas such as sport or playing live music, you could just be in the zone. That's when you are so comfortable doing what you do that you put on a performance of a lifetime.

 

[nikon_sam]

Getting out of my Comfort Zone doesn't mean changing the way I shoot or what I shoot...it's more like shooting something that others will see and putting myself in situations that causes me to not hide in the shadows...
Over the last five or more years I've been shooting an annual event...in the first few years I was assisting by being a second camera...lately, I've been the main shooter and the one putting it all together with the final result being a photo album or yearbook sorta thing for the person heading up this event...
This is what I consider getting out of my comfort zone...having to be a bit more aggressive and not hiding...facing my subjects more, trusting my experience and then believing the final product is good enough to present to it's new owner...
All I can do is the best I can do and that has to be enough...
I have two of these events coming up...one in October and the other next year in April...the nice part of all this is that I've been asked to do this by every one of the Chairs...it's kinda nice to be requested...and maybe I am doing something right...

 

[giellaleafapmu]

I see that most are talking about comfort zone associated to some creative and artistic process. What really makes my hands sweat is when I have to bring pictures home: the assignment. It doesn't matter if it is trivial or not or even if it is payed or not, but when I _have_ to come back with something is when I get nervous. In fact, since most of the time I am in that situation for product photography I am more afraid of trivial subjects than anything else. "I have to make a calendar for my company: we produce nails". That's the kind of sentence which scares me. For this reason I don't try to get out of my comfort zone but rather to bring the wider range of subjects within my comfort zone. I would not try anything new for the first time when I have to bring back some picture, so I waste a lot of time trying to get nice pictures of trivial objects and to figure out how to light boring subject to make them look interesting. Of course nails were just an example, but a goon one as they are small, insignificant, don't look nice in macro as a finely machined piece of metal would and reflect a lot of light. Probably it was not what the OP was about but that's what I do in this respect.

GLF

 

[Roger Hicks]

I guess it depends if your comfort zone is a perceived to be rut or not. If it is working for you, then enjoy it while it works. If it isn't working for you, then that is the time to try a new approach. Sometimes you need to stay within a comfort zone in order to build a body of work until it is time to move on. Sometimes, in other areas such as sport or playing live music, you could just be in the zone. That's when you are so comfortable doing what you do that you put on a performance of a lifetime.

YES! There are far too many people who can't tell the difference between a "comfort zone" and a "rut" because they produce rotten pictures either way. Constantly defending a choice to working outside your "comfort zone" is all too often an excuse for producing rotten pictures because you don't actually have a comfort zone: you simply don't know what you're doing, ever.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Getting out of my Comfort Zone doesn't mean changing the way I shoot or what I shoot...it's more like shooting something that others will see and putting myself in situations that causes me to not hide in the shadows...
Over the last five or more years I've been shooting an annual event...in the first few years I was assisting by being a second camera...lately, I've been the main shooter and the one putting it all together with the final result being a photo album or yearbook sorta thing for the person heading up this event...
This is what I consider getting out of my comfort zone...having to be a bit more aggressive and not hiding...facing my subjects more, trusting my experience and then believing the final product is good enough to present to it's new owner...
All I can do is the best I can do and that has to be enough...
I have two of these events coming up...one in October and the other next year in April...the nice part of all this is that I've been asked to do this by every one of the Chairs...it's kinda nice to be requested...and maybe I am doing something right...

Not really, no. It may also involve realizing that you're simply not very good at something, so the only reason for doing it is personal pleasure. Don't inflict second-rate work on other people. For me, this is best illustrated by singing. Yes, I've kept a folk club alive and happy for an hour when the booked singer turned up late, but that was down to enthusiasm and the fact that drink had been widely taken (not least by me) rather than my singing voice.

More recently, I have advised a young sculptor and musician to concentrate on one or the other, not both, for risk of spreading himself too thin.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

I see that most are talking about comfort zone associated to some creative and artistic process. What really makes my hands sweat is when I have to bring pictures home: the assignment. It doesn't matter if it is trivial or not or even if it is payed or not, but when I _have_ to come back with something is when I get nervous. In fact, since most of the time I am in that situation for product photography I am more afraid of trivial subjects than anything else. "I have to make a calendar for my company: we produce nails". That's the kind of sentence which scares me. For this reason I don't try to get out of my comfort zone but rather to bring the wider range of subjects within my comfort zone. I would not try anything new for the first time when I have to bring back some picture, so I waste a lot of time trying to get nice pictures of trivial objects and to figure out how to light boring subject to make them look interesting. Of course nails were just an example, but a goon one as they are small, insignificant, don't look nice in macro as a finely machined piece of metal would and reflect a lot of light. Probably it was not what the OP was about but that's what I do in this respect.

GLF

Beautifully summarized.

Cheers,

R.

 

[nikkor-watching]

"Get out of your comfort zone" is common advice. Why? [...] To me, a "comfort zone" means knowing what you're doing.

It sounds like you want or need the phrase defined.
I attempted a handful of searches for the origin of the phrase without success.
I would expect that it came from one of those tiresome mangement trainers who companies thought would be a fine idea to gee-up their managers who had attained some kind of stable and comfortable performance in the United States, the originator country of the production line. "Comfort zone" means nothing but run-of-the-mill performance in this context, and it is to be supposed getting out of it is concerned with the improvement of some linear and quantifiable performance metric more than it is with the method. I do not seriously believe that the phrase "Getting out of your comfort zone" originally represented the enrichment of exchanging one kind of endeavour for another, or anything but becoming a bigger cog in somebody else's economic wheel.
And if I am right, you can safely ignore such advice for what it is.

 

[Roger Hicks]

It sounds like you want or need the phrase defined. . . .

No. I want it exposed for the nonsense it is.

Cheers,

R.

 

[nikkor-watching]

• "The Comfort Zone
• The origin of the phrase ‘comfort zone’ is very hard to track down and everyone has a personal definition and understanding of the term. The earliest usage in relation to performance is in the title of Judith Bardwick’s 1991 work ‘Danger in the Comfort Zone: From Boardroom to Mailroom – How to Break the Entitlement Habit that’s Killing American Business' but, although the book explores performance and behaviour, the author does not even use the term ‘comfort zone’, let alone define it. Expressions such as ‘being in one’s comfort zone’ or ‘I’m comfortable with that’ exemplify the extent to which the concept has become accepted in the English language. Psychologists and behaviourists have their own meaning of the term but when it comes to performance, it is relatively straightforward to construct a definition that encapsulates the principle elements: The comfort zone is a behavioural state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviours to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk"

• - Alisdair White, "From Comfort Zone to performance management"

 

[graywolf]

YES! There are far too many people who can't tell the difference between a "comfort zone" and a "rut" because they produce rotten pictures either way. Constantly defending a choice to working outside your "comfort zone" is all too often an excuse for producing rotten pictures because you don't actually have a comfort zone: you simply don't know what you're doing, ever.

I consider myself a mediocre photographer. But for some strange reason, when I am out with other photographers, and see what they produced...

It is kind of like when I took a snap of a lady friend awhile back, she said she looks awful in photos and did not like to have her photo taken. So I just lifted the camera, snap! One shot. When she saw it she insisted on paying me for it to use on her facebook account. Her comment was that I made it look like no work at all.

Mediocre photo, yes, but not incompetently done.

The funny thing is, that when I say someone is competent, I get accused of damning with faint praise. In a world where it seems like almost no one is competent, it does not seem like faint praise to me.

In case my point was not clear, I am agreeing with Roger.


(I just looked up "mediocre", it still seems to mean "average". But, just like "competent", most people seem to think the words mean inferior. Well, they do, but only in comparison to "exceptional".)

 

[Cyriljay]

When I am not in connected with my Camera " I am out of my comfort Zone" But when my cameras are with me I automatically in a comfort -zone . This proves me when i always look back at my photography. Either it was landscape or Street or any other photography I am sure I was in a very good comfort -zone and surely something was working good in my favour.