Crying Is Contagious: Facing Self-Doubt as a Photographer

Looking back, this post captures something I still deal with, dealing with self-doubt as a photographer doesn’t just disappear once you’ve been doing this a while, it just gets a little quieter and a little easier to push through. That hard shoot with a family I’d never met, a three-year-old who didn’t want to cooperate, and sun that wouldn’t hide when I needed it to, could have wrecked my confidence for weeks. Instead, I got back up the next morning and did another shoot, and that’s really the whole trick.

Yesterday when we were leaving a Barley Festival, Scarlet started crying the howling, overtired, overstimulated, bounce-housed-out cries of a child badly needing a nap. These cries, like nearly all of her cries, pierce my heart. Yesterday they pierced my heart so badly, my eyes started tearing up with her moans. I think even Des threw in a melodic whine or two. I was glad that Cassidy couldn’t see my eyes. Could you imagine a minivan full of four people, three of which are crying for no apparent reason? And then you have to drive these crazies home in time to make a big batch of pumpkin stew. No?

I had to hide it a bit. Luckily, all three, and even four of us drove home dry-eyed.

This is what happened yesterday to make me sad. In clear, dry facts. 1. Someone in public was a bit cold to me. 2. And I had a photo shoot that wasn’t easy. That’s it, seriously. Those are the facts. And this is how my mind translated it:

Someone was cold, or at least not overly friendly to me because I’m worthless and not eligible for niceness. Logically, I know I have warm and friendly and loving family and friends. However when you’re a bit nutty, all of that logic goes out the window. I stew on it for hours. Sometimes days. If you ever want to get under my skin for a few days, or even weeks, be rude to me. I will eventually get over it but it might make me wail when my daughter and son wail. Or at least come close.

As for the hard photo shoot, my mind (briefly) translated it as that maybe this career choice is out of my reach. And that I suck. Obviously. And what was I thinking that I could actually do this? And what right do I have to say I’m a photographer?

Clearly, I’m not.

No. Clearly, I am.

I had a lot of momentum going after I first “announced” I wanted to get serious and start being what I want to be when I grow up. And I worked hard. I still work hard. Yet, realistically, I have two kids who don’t fly right into bed and sleep after a long day. I have lots of businessy-related stuff to take care of that doesn’t happen overnight. With the momentum, I spiraled beautifully up for days on end. And then, while I didn’t hit a wall, I hit a few roadblocks. Such as a hard shoot. What made it hard was that I had never in my life met the family I was photographing. And after I arrived early and light-metered for 15 minutes under a steady, overcast sky, the harsh sun came out and stayed out despite my desperate pleas for it to go away.

Just this once.

It didn’t. The family had a three-year-old who did not want to be photographed. Luckily, that is something I can work with. My own three-year-old gives me the practice. And the sun can be hidden from. I knew I had to save the day because it was the only way things could go. I could not fail. And I didn’t. Somewhere in the middle of it, it occurred to me that I only had a responsibility to do what the clients asked me to do. I didn’t have to land a National Geographic cover or win any awards or even take their breaths away by the genius quality of my work. Which I know, I know so much, that I’m capable of doing.

I hope I did. It’s the ultimate goal here. It’s that photo magic. If it didn’t exist, my career field wouldn’t exist.

It just threw me off that my spiraling arc of confidence and action faltered just a bit so early in the game. That old demons reared their ugly heads. Until I got in my car and reviewed the photos and realized there were plenty of gems in there. And they didn’t ask me for plenty. They wanted one, maybe two. I took hundreds. I woke up today and did another shoot.

Then I woke up today, ever more further in this journey than I’ve ever been. Still scared out of my wits but I know I’ve learned a lot in the last ten to 15 years that I’ve studied, in some capacity or another, professional photography. I’ve learned enough that people trust me to take their photos. And they should. I’m so over it – the fear and the doubt. I don’t suck at this.

And just believing that and getting up to do it again is what I call progress.