I’m pretty confident that all of us have sometimes had the feeling that our work is not good enough. I sure know I’ve doubted myself many, many times. In this video from Adorama, photographer David Bergman talks about the imposter syndrome and the loss of confidence. But, he also gives you some great advice on how to deal with them and boost your photographic self-confidence.
Apple’s new Christmas ad reminds creatives to not be afraid of putting ourselves out there
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dJCroCMBPM
Most of Apple’s ads over the years tend to be a dig at a competitor. Most notably, PCs. But over the last few years, Apple’s been on the receiving end of other companies ads taking jabs at them, particularly from Samsung. So, they changed tactics to try and tell stories, especially with their Christmas adverts.
And while this is still just an advertisement, Apple’s 2018 Christmas ad, Share Your Gifts, tells a great story. And regardless of who’s saying it, the message it gives is a good one; If you’re a secret creative, don’t be afraid to put yourself and your work out there.
How to approach strangers on the street to shoot portraits or video
Street photography is a weird genre of photography. So many want to try it, but they’re afraid. Afraid of rejection and potentially hostile reactions. There are two schools of thought when photographing people in the street. The first is to just shoot, and worry about consequences later. Legally, that’s fine in many parts of the world. The latter is to obtain permission first and then shoot the photo.
There is the argument that asking takes away the spontaneity. What you saw and wanted to photograph ceases to exist. But it becomes something else. A street portrait. That, too, can be a great thing. In this video, photographer Jim Rogalski shows us how he approaches strangers in the street, even in other countries where there are significant language problems.
I’m not good at street photography – I’m just not scared
Today I used Lightroom Mobile to capture images on the street for the first time. I recently remembered that you can sync images from Lightroom Mobile right to the Lightroom desktop application. This was huge for me as I’m tired of syncing via Airdrop… It legit takes forever to select which images you want to import.
Anyway, when syncing the images I noticed each one took about 10-20 seconds, quite long, but worth it considering the images were RAW. This also gave me a little bit of time to inspect each image. I had nothing else to do so I looked over them one by one as they dropped in. I didn’t make any changes, simply evaluated them based on quality.
Your fear in photography and creativity might be your parents fault
Fear and creativity go hand in hand. At least, I believe they should, if you want to really push yourself. But getting over that fear can be very tough. But it’s a weird kind of fear. It’s not like a fear of flying, or rattlesnakes, or something tangible that does hold at least some chance of causing you physical harm. Fear in creativity is often created solely in our minds. And we suppress it.
Because we can avoid it by simply not pushing ourselves and not putting ourselves out there. Ted Forbes from the Art of Photography discusses this fear in a recent video, and makes some extremely good points about how what might be the cause of it. It turns out that, as well meaning as they may have been, it could be our parents fault.
Get past the haters, get over the doubt, and create what you can’t
A couple of weeks ago, the Oscars were on. And there was one big moment of it that stuck out in a lot of peoples minds. No, not that moment, I’m talking about the one during the commercial break. The one where Casey Neistat introduced the world to “the rest of us”. Reminding everybody that there is a big filmmaking and creative community outside of Hollywood.
It showed a bunch of content from various popular and completely unknown creators on YouTube with Casey’s voiceover and a simple message. When we’re told that we can’t, we all have the same answer. “Watch me”. And it ended with the line “Do what you can’t”. Now, Casey has elaborated on that closing four word sentence with his own video, in typical Casey fashion.
Gaining Confidence as a Portrait Photographer: Before The Shoot
A lot of new photographers getting into portraiture ask the question, what are some tips for taking portraits? And the answers are always the same; try to get natural poses, shoot during the golden hour, use a longer lens, use a lower aperture and so on…
Those are great first tips, but something that doesn’t get brought up a lot is making sure you’re confident going into the shoot.
The importance of social skills in street photography
I teach a lot of street photography workshops for a living. I’m always wondering, “How can I best empower my students, help them build their confidence, and ultimately make better images?”
Honestly, the most important way for a photographer to make better images is to build their social skills.
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