(This is an ongoing series that I am writing for the month of December, 2014. After nearly 40 years in this business, I have learned a couple of things. I am sharing that knowledge here.)
What is “self-sabotage”?
It is the premature destruction of a talented photographer… and it comes from within.
It starts when we accept the judgement of one person as the gospel truth of our work. Usually that voice is one of negativity. We can have a huge bunch of people who tell us they like what we do, a cadre of clients who continue to support us, and yet one lone voice can carry so much weight.
When we let it.
I taught for a while at a photography school in Phoenix after my celebrated return from LA – (LOL, more on that later). It was part of a modeling school and we had a very good facility with students from all over the southwest.
One day the director called me to discuss a great idea she had about doing a show of the students work. It would be like an opening and there would be food and drink and making merry.
She also mentioned that she wanted to get one of the local photographers to come in and ‘judge’ the work. I was sort of mixed about that since this was student work and it would take a judge who knew what the parameters were to be able to do the work justice. When she told me who she was going to invite… well, that sort of took a lot of the fun out of it.
Egos can be a problem in this business. They can blind one to all that is outside their orb of ‘kissassedness’ and provide a faux quality of relevance where none really exists. This photographer had that… trait.
This may sound braggadocios, but it is the honest truth. We had a hell of a school and we had some simply astounding photographers. Some of these guys are still shooting and kicking ass all over the country. The show ended up with 38 prints and all of them were stunning. The instructors and some of the local photographers came in to help hang the show and were simply blown away at the quality of the work.
On the day of the show, he came, he saw, he yawned and then – with almost a sinister smile singled out one print hanging on the wall. A landscape/industrial shot and began to destroy everything about it.
He was dead wrong, to be sure. It was a terrific image and all of us in attendance knew it. But for that ‘judge’ the need to decimate someone who had made a wonderful image was simply too much. He gathered his sycophantic little entourage together and railed on and on about some nonsense that made him sound smarter than anyone else in the room.
And then he turned and left.
The photographer who had made the image had waited for days for this guy, who was one of his heroes, to come in and see his image. His look of despair was something I will always remember.
He quit taking photographs a month or two later and moved back to his hometown. His talent lost to us.
I don’t blame the arrogant ‘judge’ photographer for being a smug and arrogant douchebag – that is who he was. But the young man who walked away from that talent based on the judgement of one naysayer was simply sad. No matter how many people told him that he indeed had the chops, the self doubt in his head was so amplified by douchetographer that he couldn’t side step it.
Now to be sure there are many other ways to self-sabotage your career;
- Buy too much gear and make too few images.
- Focus on technique instead of connection.
- Make images “just like that other photographer…”
- Intently work on making images “they” want to see.
- Party.
- Chemistry… you know what I’m talking about.
- Forget to bill – yeah, it happens.
- Forget that April 15 is coming up faster than you think.
- Cheat clients, assistants, vendors.
- Have rates far below the local standard.
But the one that is more mighty than all of those is the one we call selective hearing / self doubt. Putting all that weight on one negative remark and setting aside all the other peoples support is the quickest way to becoming a stocker at Walmart. (Not that there is anything wrong with that.)
There will always be negative things said about our work. No one can please everyone. But knowing how to handle that negative feedback is as important as it can be.
– Realize that there will be negative people. Some will have their own reasons and some will simply be trolls.
– Decide to go with the general consensus. If more people like it than don’t you are good.
– Accept the fact that we have control over what we think, how we react and what we decide to respond to. They don’t – we do.
– Know and love your own work enough to know when it is authentic and true, and that the naysayers are wrong.
It can be an amazing moment when you hear a sad-sack troll say something awful about your work, and you respond with ‘meh’, I don’t really care what that guy says, I know my work is good. The first time you have that inner dialog, you will feel amazing.
The self-saboteur is fading.
Now stop drooling over that expensive lens and go out and shoot something.
PHOTO INFO:
The image was shot on a 4″x5″ Toyo on PlusX film. The print was first toned in Selenium toner and then re-toned in blue toner.
