Inspiration

Now I'm not going to insult my mama and tell you that I am dumber than a box of hair, but, if you look at my schooling credentials, you might wonder. The fact is, I dropped out of home school two months into my sophomore year and went to work for my dad to help him build a small custom home. Have you ever tried to get a fifteen year old to do anything he isn't excited about? I am glad I wasn't in charge of me! After that, I drifted from receiving gift department inventory items and pricing them at Christian Book Supply, to blueprint and copy work, to other various construction related jobs including painting and being a plumber's laborer.

One late afternoon,at age 17, as I tidied up the work area at Blueprinter's Ink, I listened as Paul Harvey described, on The Rest of the Story, how it came to be that Eric Clapton got serious about playing the guitar. When young Eric was 13 years old, he received his first guitar, an acoustic, and put in a lot of frustrating time trying to learn the blues on it. He nearly gave up and, when at the age of 17 he failed out of art school, took a job working as a bricklayer for a time. From the repetition of his new job, he learned that he could get good at something he wasn't even all that interested in if he just put in the time and stuck with it. Armed with this new knowledge and an electric guitar, he applied himself more rigorously to his music and, since then, seems to have done alright for himself in the blues arena.

Here is what I eventually concluded from that story: If I believe that I should learn a task, something I might not even particularly care to do, I will work at it until I am good enough at it that I truly enjoy it. When I got married and needed to support our new family, I applied my Clapton lesson to building houses with my Dad. Not only did I try to be a better carpenter every month, I also read any books and trade publications I could get my hands on, searching for that one piece of information that would make the difference in my quality level and productivity. And I started actually enjoying things like drywall and framing (but not insulating, ever) and thinking like a site supervisor .

During the past week I have been trying to find a way to get better as a photographer, and my conclusion most days has been that I simply do not have the time. I tried shooting on Wednesday a couple of times, but I knew even while I was taking them that the pictures were no good. Then, on Thursday, I went over to our friend Bob's house to shoot some emerald and sapphire pictures for his Ebay store. Using our 5D mark 2 and an 85mm lens with a macro extension ring on the back, I shot for three hours with mostly natural light from the window. It was so addicting that I lost track of the time. I was metering and focusing manually, and the gems were so small that I couldn't tell if I had gotten the shot until I zoomed way in on the image on the LCD screen in the back of the camera. I took one gem picture where it looks almost like the reflection of a city at night in a shop window, and even though that picture is not completely in focus on part of the front of the stone, I am still excited about it.

On Saturday, the kids were being cute in the dining room and I decided to get out the camera again (same setup minus the macro) and shoot a bit. I got a couple of good pictures and again did the work manually. Finally, a little bit of momentum. The main goal of my portrait shooting right now is to get pictures that look as if Alicia took them, and so far I am progressing toward that end noticeably. It's simple, right? I just have to use a tight lens, look for what is interesting, compelling or beautiful to me about my subject or subjects, find the pretty light, meter properly, direct the shot, focus properly and get some good moments. And do it over and over and over until I can nail it every time.

And it finally hit me that the answer to my question of how to get where I want to go with all of this lies in my level of inspiration. What else will cause me to choose shooting practice over any other activity when it feels as though I am already strapped for time and stretched beyond the limit.

All of my life I have struggled with a type of perfectionism, the kind that makes me not want to start something if it won't end up to be the mostest and bestest version of a thing that ever there was. I daydream about being an amazing musician or woodworker, picture myself doing perfect work that will last forever. Anything less would be a waste of time, right? It is much easier to not even start things I know I don't have the time or patience to finish well.

So it is tricky for me to work my way into the photo industry because, for photographers, inspiration is a fickle thing. We might not know what kind of pictures we are going to shoot at a gig, we might not be feeling confident or secure in our abilities because we got up on the wrong side of the bed, and we still have to expect great things of ourselves out of every shoot. We owe that to the clients who hire us. The grand secret is, once we are present behind the camera and looking, really trying to see what is interesting, compelling or beautiful to us on the other side of that lens, magical things can happen. We find perspectives that blow our minds and fill us with emotion. The inspiration is there when we look for it. And we can begin taking great pictures.

Assuming the lighting is decent, of course.