This is a wonderful time! This is a wonderful time to be a photographer! The digital age, with its cameras, Photoshop, Lightroom, plugins, widgets, websites, apps, wordpress, blogs, FaceBook, Twitter, Google+, has allowed us to connect and share faster, with greater accuracy, and with a broader reach than ever before. Lest we take it for granted it would do us some good to remember that this is a wonderful time for photography.
This is also a challenging time. There is so much available to us so quickly that we can be at risk for developing an inability to tolerate disappointment, boredom, or frustration. This ability to tolerate uncomfortable mood states is an important skill that we begin to learn early in life provided we have some good mentoring through attuned caregivers. Parents will recognize this as the tantrum throwing ages of 2 or 3 when each little disappointment becomes a major crisis for a while. Eventually we learn that small disappointments are different from large ones and, hopefully, we stop “losing it” every time something does not go our way.
The challenge, however, is to continue learning this skill in smaller and more subtle ways as we continue our journey through life. Our current “distraction available at every turn” world threatens us gently, time and again, with the reward of distraction from discomfort rather than encouraging the tolerance of it.
And this threatens our art.
That LCD on the back of the camera offers much distraction in the form of chimping or learning our internal camera settings that it just might detract us from developing the patience to watch the light slowly change over a landscape. The computer, that wonderful device that has opened this whole new world, threatens to distract us through Twitter, FaceBook, Google+ing from sitting and focusing on our editing, book-making, working efforts. (I was made vibrantly aware of this just the other evening…and as a result my latest Blurb.com book remains uncompleted.)
All hope is not lost however; we continue to have dominion over our own minds for the time being. Just becoming aware of our tendencies, and the tendencies of our continued connection to Web2.0, can do wonders in making mindful choices to focus on what will actually feed our soul, nurture our creativity, and produce the work that is precious to us and-I would argue-to the world.
How have you found yourself distracted from your goals, projects, or photography? Stay tuned for another blog post on some ideas how to overcome “distraction-itis.”
In a strange coincidence, today I had no internet access for the better part of the working day and I accomplished some things that have been on my to do list for a long time. I am certain my photography could benefit from such a break from all technology and I need to think about how to make that happen.
Wow, that is a strange coincidence. I’m actually thinking of pulling the plug on the interwebs on certain days in order to get things checked off my to do list.
Brian
Good stuff…..i need some distraction from being distracted and not shooting. Help a brotha out. Wish I could have made it out yesterday to the judging….practice ran a little late. Knew anyone that did well?
Thanks Marc,
Hey Brotha, I did try! 😉
We need to get together and have a beer sometime soon. Been missing you.
I’m the sort of person who could be diverted from something riveting by drying paint, depending on what rubbish my brain is muddling at the time. I have next to no attention span, so the internet is akin to a bad addiction (yes, i maintain that there are good addictions).
I’d say it both helps and hinders me – helps in that there is a never ending flow of new ideas, new things I would want to try, new ways of looking at things etc. Hinders in that I look at what feels like half the world getting out there and doing what they’re doing and being really good at it and if I look too much, i despair. Because what hope have I ever got of getting anywhere near there when a an 17 year old picks up a camera and turns into a god in seemingly no time at all? That’s my biggest distraction of all – the thought always lingering at the back of my mind that i should just forget about it because I don’t really have any business playing in that field when there are people out there who could do the same thing in many different and better ways.
It doesn’t stop me from shooting, although I will admit I should be more assertive about getting myself out there and actually looking for photography work. I want to, but I can’t do what I want to be doing with it, and my confidence is low as I am not throwing myself at the sort of work I need to be doing to build up. Not that this is any fault of the internet btw, the internet just helps to pull the issue into sharp focus 😉
I hear you Charlene. I find myself interested in doing some work for pay rather than just for myself and then I turn into a stress basket because I doubt myself. Gah! Only hope is to charge headlong into it, eh?
Yup, only way to go I reckon. Get oneself in so deep that there’s no time to pause for confidence check.
Now to take my own advice….
Yep, that works. Have a go, you’ll do well.
The computer and internet have definitely created an onset of ADD in my world (squirrel!). As an only child who spent many hours just observing, I mourn for the person who could once do that so easily…and so guilt free.
I like your take on both sides of this. Nothing is really all bad or all good when it comes right down to it. It’s finding the balance that’s difficult.
[Squirrel!!] 😉
Wow, I think you’ve hit a proverbial nail on the head: the aspect of guilt in this whole thing!
I agree, nothing is all good or all bad; it’s about finding the balance and staying mindful enough to do so.