It's Okay to Change and Grow
If you’ve ever had a craft, especially in the arts, you are always learning how to be better. Learning not to be in competition with others every day, but in competition with your past work and where you want to go in the future with your art. Photography is no different.
When I first started taking photos it was because I was enrolled at The University of Arizona in the School of Music, I had a camera, and a lot of my friends were needing headshots for operas that they were auditioning for, graduations, and updated photos for their portfolio. I didn’t have much knowledge of what I was doing other than I knew the basics. At that time I didn’t pay much attention to other photographers because I knew I never would be on their level. That wasn’t my dream then.
Now, on the other hand, it is.
Give us weddings every month (please pandemic go away), give us people reaching out to us constantly for sessions, give us the published photo sessions in magazines or the post that goes viral for a session with a family/loved ones. We don’t want this just because “fame”, we don’t want this just because we want others to see our work, we want it because that’s our goals that we are striving towards (ok, maybe we can go without a viral post…but the others are all goals of ours!)
When I was doing this business by myself I would look at other photographer’s photos and just think, “man, I will never be able to get a photo like that.”, “how is she getting booked that much?!”, “how do they get that much interaction on their posts and I’m not getting any.” All of these weren’t looking at the quality of my work, how much it had grown, where I was at in my business journey, it was solely looking and comparing my work, my passion, my dreams to someone else’s results.
I know we all do this. I know this isn’t just me. In fact, to this day I find myself sometimes getting stuck in this trap. But now, when I realize I’m starting to compare my work/journey I turn my perspective into “what am I doing to fix this.”
Take, for example, this photo session below;
If you’ve been following us for a while you know this session. If you’ve read our past blogs, you’ve even seen some of their photos, but this session reminds me a huge amount of where we’ve been and where we are going.
Meet Nick and Georgina. You may see their face a lot on our site, it’s because they are some of our best friends. She is one of our Brand Ambassadors with the boudoir section of our business, and they are two of our biggest supporters in the business.
The photos below were from their engagement session, back in 2018. We are extremely proud of these photos. They aren’t anything less than a beautiful, hilarious memory that we get to share with the two of them but as you’ll see as you read further we kept working on our product and we produce better and better images, experiences, and memories as we do.
Gorgeous couple, right? They loved these photos when they got them back. Nothing crazy awful…but as the time passed we trained more, studied more, practiced more, and got in more of a pattern of what we wanted our style of photos to be. We became more confident behind the camera and therefore helping our clients be more confident in front of the camera. We continued to focus on ourselves, our craft, and where we wanted our business to go.
Because of this when these two amazing love birds got married in 2019, we were able to give them a whole other session that looks like it’s from completely different photographers!
We were more aware of lighting, poses, what looked amazing with our clients and what didn’t, we were clearer with what we wanted from them and they were able to easily show off their love and beauty because of it.
As a painter, writer, photographer, or any artist, it’s important to train your mind to not worry about other’s people’s journey in comparison.
Notice that little word, comparison, because that’s the biggest hindrance for any artist.
We strongly encourage artists to look at other’s around them! Look at what they are producing, find the items that resonate with you and notice the things that don’t. Accept it as a beautiful piece of work and maybe learn something from it or even set a goal for yourself in inspiration from it; whether that be the style that it was done in or the subject of what it conveyed.
Ask questions! Reach out to people who you admire, ask them what their personal artist journey has been, ask them how/where they learned their craft. Even if they don’t answer, even if they don’t want to share their story, at least you are attempting to reach out as a way to educate yourself rather than compare yourself in the quiet of your mind.
It may seem hard, even impossible, but teach yourself not to ponder the “why isn’t this me” questions. Keep in mind that you don’t know what that person has gone through in their journey of their art. You don’t know the countless hours in the middle of the night editing or revising their piece, you don’t know the tears that were shed, you don’t know their insecurities that they have had to climb over. You just know yours.
We are supremely grateful for those that have followed us, and supported us, throughout our journey. This blog will even be it’s own journey. We promise to continue exercising our craft and getting better at producing products for you; whether that is a simple blog or a simple photo.
Remember to always strive to be better than the you you were yesterday and don’t let anyone discourage your growth, no matter how slow or different it may look.