Stop the Stress, Create for Yourself

As the year begins, people are making resolutions and setting goals. Add in the constant social media trends and photographer communities saying how things should be, and it can be overwhelming and a source of stress. Despite all of that, remember to create for yourself and be true to your vision.

Goal Setting

The resolutions and setting of goals is just one element of the pressure a photographer can begin to feel. Reflecting and setting goals for the year ahead is important, I do it for my photography and business. But make sure you are setting goals that are appropriate for you, not borrowing goals from someone else who might have different objectives for their photography.

I often see this happen, where Photographer A is out trying to make money from their photography and Photographer B likes just to take pictures as a source of stress relief. Then, Photographer B starts to feel anxious because they feel like they aren’t doing enough or are self-conscious about their work.

It is essential to realize our goals for photography can be quite different. Photographer A will have much different goals than someone who simply wants to go outside to take nice pictures with no desire to make money from their photos but simply improve their craft.

Before setting goals, consider your objective with photography and don’t base your goals on what other photographers are doing. Their path and objective are likely very different than yours.

Chasing Trends

There is also the stress from social media as different trends emerge and then as a creative questioning whether you should follow the trend for the likes. It can often seem every other photographer out there is doing something different than you and feeling like you need to adapt.

Trends can range from color grading (remember teal and orange?) to photographing in black and white, to street photography being the in thing, to small scenes in landscape photography. Before you know it, you don’t know which way to go and quickly grow tired of chasing trends. 

Don’t chase the trends. Simply be true to yourself and your creative vision. Your creative vision isn’t always going to align with current trends. But staying true to your creative vision will help you further refine that style, get better at that style, and eventually become known for that style.

If you go from one trend to the next, you simply blend in with others doing the same thing. Additionally, you never really get the chance to master the type of photography or editing style that energizes you. Chasing trends is tiring and often more about pleasing others than fulfilling your own creative vision.

Finding Your Vision

How do you find your vision? Initially, I recommend getting out and photographing anything that seems remotely interesting to you. What gives you energy? What excites you about going out (or to the studio) and photographing something or someone?

I’ve done a lot of landscape photography, dabbled in street photography, photographed many events, portraits, and corporate headshots. I tried to force myself to like portrait photography for a long time, but eventually, I realized I wasn’t excited about portrait photography.  I decided to put my time and energy into landscape photography.

Even within genres of photography, there is still an element of being true to yourself and your vision. I love to photograph waterfalls, and within the landscape photography community, that can be cliché. But I like it, I find the whole experience relaxing, from the visual to the sound of the flowing water. I stay true to that vision and continue to photograph waterfalls to this day. 

I still photograph other landscape photography subjects, there is always room for growth. But I don’t not photograph certain landscape photography scenes simply because a contingent of photographers think something is overdone. I go out there, enjoy it, and work on my own creative vision.

How about you? Do you stay true to what brought you to the world of photography? Do you still photograph images for your creative vision? Or do you feel the pressure from others to do things one way or another based on the current perception?