Down | Flower Friday

So in my last Flower Friday post I swore I was going to re-start my Flower Friday posts. Two Fridays + a day have passed since that resolution, and now I’m writing a Flower Friday post on a Saturday. WELL, better than not writing at all, no? I’m going to (attempt to) keep my writing plan — to introduce more personal posts — going forward (I hope) (maybe).

Mostly, though, I find that my failure to keep the only blogging schedule I’ve tried to put in place in years is symbolic of how I feel all over right now. Unless it’s just me, it seems as though Jan & Feb are traditionally slower months for photographers. January picks up for Parkites due to the Sundance Film Festival, but, for the most part, two types of photography business owners materialize early in the New Year: those who use the downtime wisely based on the experience that life goes on post-slow-slump; and the rest of us that feel panicked by the fact that they weren’t careful-for-what-they-wished (I spent the majority of last year wishing things would slow down). [I’m also sure there’s a third type that is busy-like-crazy with winter gigs because they’re busy-like-crazy all the time because they’re shooting rock stars. But I’m ignoring those people right now. ~Maybe out of envy.~]

I try very hard to fit into Group A. I have some client work, but it’s not the rush that I experience between May-December, so I busy myself up with styled shoots, trade shoots for networking purposes, and I revisit past shoots for submission to publications. I catch up on blog posts and re-strategize my business model and go over photography tutorials by the best of the best (Melissa Jill’s are the bomb). However, I end up spending the vast majority of my time researching, which means I’m poring over other photographer’s sites (often my colleagues in Utah, who are basically my competition even though everyone uses words like ‘colleagues’ to describe one another). And, in no time, I fall into Group B, terrorized, horrified, and self-loathing because I had no idea everyone around me is so ridiculously good.

Apparently, while I was running around in 2015 with the sole intent of delivering client work, Utahn photographers were killing at all aspects of the game. They were collaborating with the top wedding industry planners, florists, and publications. They were owning Instagram.They were rocking film cameras. They were traveling around the world. They were hosting workshops. And they were crafting work that makes me feel ashamed of my own.

I’ve spent the past few weeks wondering why I haven’t been doing all those things as successfully and as strategically as my peers. And this self-doubt has been a brutal way to welcome 2016.

I was once in Amsterdam with a group of friends. We were due to leave the city for another part of the Netherlands, but we couldn’t figure out how/where/when to catch our train out of town. As in: we were *at* the station, and trains were coming & going, and all the while we were asking each other, ‘ummm what do we do?’ without actually taking action. We watched various platforms play host to lines that passengers boarded & departed… and still, the group of us gestured and/or pointed at the cars as they sailed away on the tracks, unsure if we were supposed to be on one of them. I don’t want to know what we were expecting (a stranger overhearing us would advise us what to do?) but it was a solid hour before we got it together and figured out how to get where we wanted to be.

I feel like that right now. Like everyone not only knows how to get where they’re going but is already on the train — hell, everyone else is already at their destination — and I’m still on the platform, staring at an upside-down map with a furrowed brow.

Three shooters in particular that slay me are Britt Chudleigh, D’arcy Benincosa, and Kate Osborne. [Am I total idiot for sending anyone reading this to sites of better photographers? You bet. But I also need to keep this real.] They capture life in their work (literally & figuratively). Everything they do — their compositions, their clients, their styling —  impresses the hell out of me. The kicker? These women live within miles of me — they aren’t vague symbols of ‘Talented Photographers’ that I can always dismiss as being successful in markets that have nothing to do with me. No, no; they’re basically my neighbors. So I’m aware that we’re going up against each other whenever a client might be googling ‘weddings’ or ‘lifestyle photography’ in our area (or maybe I’m just plain flattering myself that someone might consider me alongside one of them). I feel so.much. when I look through their work, and although I wish I could say the emotion at the forefront is Inspiration, if I’m being honest, my top two reactions (currently neck & neck with one another, or perhaps one’s the result of the other) are Frustration and Humiliation. I am so mad at myself for not delivering imagery, services, personal projects, and publications at their level.

Once I calm down (or before the fury re-rears its ugly head), I tell myself that I can only continue to learn & improve. Just… put your head down and work harder, Carla. But I also find myself torn about the direction in which I should be heading. Everywhere I look — the Martha Stewart Weddings, the Style Me Prettys, the tippy top of the industry publications — everything looks so wildly, impossibly, transcendentally styled. I used to tell myself that clients could differentiate between styled shoots and real weddings, but it seems to me that, these days, even real weddings look like fantasies come to life: brides & grooms that look like models, reception details that look like showrooms, and aspects of the day (Getting Ready, First Look, First Dances, Send Offs) that resemble scripted filmmaking. When you’re like me, and your style has been honed to ‘catch the moment,’ and your wedding photos do just that (flaws & giggles & real people enjoying their Day), it can be hard to see all the ‘perfection’ out there and not wonder, ‘should I be perfect, or should I be me?’

I think what I struggle with the most is photographing portraits. I see the same poses when I search throughout the most spectacular wedding coverage. Couples touching foreheads or noses, guys gazing at the girl while she stares down the lens, kiss, guy turned around & girl faces camera… not too smiley… actually sometimes the couple looks downright serious/intense. V & I have never operated that way. We definitely start out giving the couple a little direction, but the purpose of the instruction is not to keep them in a pose but, rather, to give them a starting point to truly engage & interact without a ‘put your hand here, now your chin here, okay, smile, now hold that, okay maybe just tilt your head a bit more, yes yes, don’t move for sec,’ etc. I’ve always been really proud of our authentic ability to bring out personalities in our images, but when I see work that makes me actually angry because it’s so good, and it’s pretty obviously posed, it gets me thinking that I’ve been heading down the wrong path all these years.

So here I am. Blathering on here about this concern of mine. I’ve decided at this point that I’d like to be more deliberate in my posing because I want to be in the game. And I think this decision to take more control of my shoots is good. But I hope being more intentional doesn’t affect my ability to capture moments, you know? But, maybe I was never meant to produce pretty-pretty work; maybe candid *is* my game, and the right clients will appreciate my unique skillset even if I’m never on the cover of Town & Country Weddings. I dunno. Mostly, right now, I’m just down. And this dissatisfaction? I just hope it incites me to grow and bloom.