I often lis­ten to Carla (my wife) talk about Eck­hart Tolle and The Power of Now. Being “in the now” is a maxim of liv­ing in the present—not being dogged by your past and not putting too much focus on what may hap­pen in the future. While I respect her views and beliefs, the notion often gets a matter-of-fact shrug from me. It makes sense, but I, prob­a­bly like so many peo­ple, have this nag­ging habit of look­ing for­ward or behind. How­ever, the point of being in the present is start­ing to make much more sense. Just today, I clicked on the Daily Thought in my email inbox.

Most peo­ple rush after plea­sure so fast that they rush right past it.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Wow. That’s it! That quote nailed it for me, and touches on pre­cisely what I’m strug­gling with today. Allow me to build the story. Those who know me will appre­ci­ate, or at least be patient with, my ten­dency to be a bit long-winded. (It’s all about pro­vid­ing context.)

For some time, Carla had men­tioned doing a photo shoot of some her food for a book project. She really wanted me to take the pho­tos. It struck me that she was not inter­ested in my tak­ing the pic­tures solely because I’m her hus­band, but because she actu­ally thinks my work is good.  Any­way, Carla invited a designer she’s work­ing with and a friend, who is a pho­tog­ra­pher, to come over for the photo shoot. I was not famil­iar with the work of the pho­tog­ra­pher,  his back­ground or expe­ri­ence. How­ever, when he arrived, he lugged in a moun­tain of equip­ment and sev­eral cam­era bags. To be hon­est, it was intim­i­dat­ing. I have no prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence with exter­nal light­ing, let alone have an arse­nal of equip­ment at my dis­posal with which to learn. The pho­tog­ra­pher was very gra­cious and fre­quently deferred to me for thoughts on com­po­si­tion and light­ing. Nev­er­the­less, I found myself shrink­ing a bit into the throws of self-doubt. What could I pos­si­bly offer some­one who has all this equip­ment? Clearly, the amount of equip­ment is reflec­tive of the over­all skill, expe­ri­ence, and apti­tude of a pho­tog­ra­pher. Right?

That’s exactly what had me a lit­tle unset­tled yes­ter­day, and it stayed in my head through night. Why was I inti­mated or over­whelmed with the pho­tog­ra­pher and his equip­ment? I have to believe it’s because he brought in all the trap­pings of what I feel that I need to be a “legit­i­mate” pho­tog­ra­pher. In a word, I felt inad­e­quate. I looked at the gear and many dif­fer­ent cam­eras, though he only used one body and one lens. I only have two dig­i­tal bod­ies and a hodge­podge of lenses. He had a big tri­pod with a nice head on it. I have a pretty basic tri­pod, not a nice Gitzo or Man­frotto.  Let’s not even get started on the light­ing equip­ment. Over­all, I had a sink­ing feel­ing of how far I have to go to be legit.

As I thought more about it, I first had to shake myself from the idea that I’m not a good pho­tog­ra­pher. I think I am. Sec­ondly, and more impor­tantly, I had to take a step back and think about not only where I want to go, but where I am—presently. The quote above really brought it home. I’ve been so focused, as I dis­cussed in my last post, on the roman­tic notion of what I’d like to do, that I’m not focus­ing on…and enjoy­ing…where I am today. I truly am at the begin­ning of my jour­ney. I don’t think any­one would be expected to have a room full of gear just start­ing out. Nor would I, even after years of shoot­ing, nec­es­sar­ily need all that equip­ment. It will really depend on what I want to do with my pho­tog­ra­phy. I have to let that come to me, and not get sad­dled with what I don’t have.  I sus­pect this is not an iso­lated feel­ing, and many peo­ple pur­su­ing a dream get in their own way by obsess­ing about where they should be and not appre­ci­at­ing the lessons gained along the way. This is where “being in my head” is a good thing, because I do ques­tion whether what I’m feel­ing makes sense. For­tu­nately, Carla is a good point of ref­er­ence and sound­ing board. She cre­ated a busi­ness from scratch, and talks fre­quently about the bal­ance between hav­ing a busi­ness plan and being open to where things may lead her.  She con­tin­ues to nav­i­gate oppor­tu­ni­ties for growth while stay­ing true to her per­sonal and busi­ness val­ues and sensibilities.

As for the shoot…at the end of the day, I think we both took some excel­lent shots. At times I felt a lit­tle nudged out by the other pho­tog­ra­pher and oth­ers in the room (quite unin­ten­tion­ally I’m sure), but it did not deter me from shoot­ing images of Carla’s food. After review­ing all of the images, I think it became appar­ent I have a very par­tic­u­lar pho­to­graphic style. Carla com­mented later that my images are prob­a­bly more artis­tic, in that I tend to focus on the beauty of an object. Unfor­tu­nately, though, that means I occa­sion­ally over­look the func­tion of the item — in this case, her food. I’m learn­ing how to cap­ture her food in a way that is suited for pub­li­ca­tion, not just for wall hang­ings.  I think this was a good oppor­tu­nity for me to think about the impor­tance of being open. What I have in mind for my pho­tog­ra­phy career (artis­tic images for exhibit and sale) may take a turn into some­thing just as ful­fill­ing (media, por­traits, etc).