Grads still have a place in digital photography

Preamble: This is a re-post of an entry from February 2020. Occasionally like to repost entries from my 15 years of writing my blog because I think the entry is still relevant.

Over the past few years I’ve noticed less and less folks using grads, and I think it’s a shame they aren’t using them. There is a general opinion now that grads are not required for digital photography but I beg to differ on this. Ultimately: the choice is yours, but it’s also my prerogative to try to change your mind :-)

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Today I’d like to discuss the validity in still using Grads in an age where digital cameras have so much dynamic range that many believe that grads are no longer required. To do this, I need to go over what happens to the exposure when we apply grads.

When using Aperture Priority, the camera automatically re-balances the exposure when a grad is applied (this does not happen in manual, which is why I mostly use Aperture Priority for most of my daylight work):

As you can see, the grad reduces the difference in contrast between sky and ground. And since the camera wants to take an average between the two values, we find the sky and ground moving towards mid-grey (18%).

In the above illustration you can see that the ground values are now lighter once the grad has been applied. This is key to my post today. When you apply grads, what you are essentially doing is opening up the shadow detail in the histogram / exposure of the photo.

Consider the histogram on the left. No grad was applied, so we end up with a classic ‘double humper’. The ground has been squeezed into the lower tones of the histogram while the sky has been squeezed into the upper registers of the histogram.

Note where 18% grey is.

The ground is essentially underexposed, while the sky is overexposed.

Also consider that the ground is residing in the shadow ‘darker’ area of the histogram. This results in loss of tonal information in the shadows as many dark tones are being quantised. Many tones become one.

Now let’s consider the same image shot with a graduated filter:

The ground values have been moved towards the middle area of the histogram. Same for the sky values. The important points to consider are:

The shadow information has been opened up (marked in red). We now have more tonal information stretching over a longer tonal scale way down into the shadows.

The highlight information has also been opened up (marked in red). We now have more tonal information stretching over a longer tonal scale way up into the highlights.

For me, the main reasons why I use grads are:

1. I wish to avoid underexposed ground and overexposed sky

2. I want to go home with a pleasing negative to work with.

3. I don’t want to have to jump through additional hoops in the processing to figure out if the image is any good. Working with an image where the sky is overexposed and the ground is underexposed isn’t very inspiring at all !

4. if I didn’t grad, I’d have to process every file I shot to see if they were any good before I began work.

5. Working with a nicely balanced exposure straight out of the camera can be, and often is, a very inspiring way of working. You can see straight away whether the composition and image works or not, and I remain engaged.

Engagement is the key for me.

I don’t want to struggle with bad exposures to make them nicer. I want to work with images that inspire me, and that means pleasing, balanced exposures.

If I go home with a nicely balanced exposures, I am more likely to work with them. Conversely, having to trawl through hundreds of images with dark foregrounds and bleached out skies wondering if they might be good once I’ve put them through my editor of choice isn’t going to fuel my creativity. And it’s certainly not going to inspire me.

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Post amble: I’d also like to point out that most folks assume that grads are used to darken the sky, or to stop the sky from being over-exposed. That’s not really the whole story. Grads reduce the dynamic range between ground and sky: which is why I focussed in the post above about the ground becoming lighter.

If you use aperture priority the camera will re-adjust the exposure as it tries to balance out ground and sky. As you push the grad down into the frame, the contrast between ground / sky is reduced and when that happens, the camera has to re-compute where mid-grey is.

So grads don’t just control the sky, they also control ground exposure. When you use them, the difference in exposure between ground and sky is reduced, and this is why my diagram at the start of the post illustrates ground becoming lighter (moving towards mid-grey) while the sky is also becoming darker (moving towards mid-grey).

Bear in mind that the human eye perceives everything as a mid-grey exposure, so this is why, even if you have loads of dynamic range, you are aiming for the ground, as well as the sky moving towards mid-grey.

Unskilled, and unaware of it?

The only thing I have learned for sure over my creative time as a photographer, is that there is always much more to learn.

The dunning-kruger effect describes how realistic we are about our abilities over our creative life.

I show this to point out a few things:

1. confidence in your abilities is not linear as your experience improves.

2. You can be very confident but know little. In essence, you think you’re better than you really are. I believe this is a protection mechanism at the start of learning something new. Otherwise we would all quit.

3. You can be low in confidence when your ability is high; although you are creating good work, you’re more critical of it.

4. Few of us get to ‘expert level’. Despite us all wishing to get to this level, the real fun is in the journey of exploring where our creativity will take us.

In my view, I am always looking for balance in my creative life. I am always hoping to attain a level where I can objectively be right about what I’m doing. The truth is, I have brief moments when I feel I can accurately evaluate my output, and that is where we should all be. If we are growing, then we should have periods of being lost as we find ourselves in new territory.

As someone who is a ‘teacher’ (I prefer guidance instructor), as I often find myself just giving folks permission to try out what they didn’t know they already knew, I’m aware of the different levels in participants handle on their own abilities.

I’ve met folks who lack a lot of confidence and yet their work is really good,. Conversely. I’ve met folks who think they know more than they actually do. I think the later is very common, because in order to not give up, we have to think we’re doing better than we really are.

It can be a little frustrating dealing with someone who’s opinion of their abilities is out of step with where they truly are, but that is the nature of progress: we start off by thinking we know more than we actually do. It is only with experience that we realise how little we actually knew when we first started out.

With regards to my own personal development, if I’m honest, I am always discovering how little I know. Every year I look back at older work and realise ‘man, I thought I really knew this, but I still have a long way to go’.

This should be for all of us - our norm. We should always be looking back at our earlier work and thinking we have done better since.

Ego has no place in Creativity

As the Buddhist saying goes, to reach enlightenment, we have to lose the ‘i’, ‘myself’, ‘me’.

To create great art, I think we have to become a conduit for the art, rather than think of ourselves as the source.

This is the relationship I have with the work I create.

You can think of ego as a badly behaved monkey. It just wants instant gratification. It wants the adulation without the effort, and it also will get pretty upset if others do not like the work. The monkey’s opinion of itself and esteem are far more important than the work. It is like the tail wagging the dog, or putting the cart before the horse.

I have said many times that objectivity allows us to be appropriately critical of our work. To be objective, we have to be able to ‘stand outside ourselves’, and view the work as a 3rd-person might. This skill is present not just in the creation of art, but in most people’s jobs who do their jobs well. The art of being able to self-assess and figure out what is lacking and what needs to be worked on is part of self-development. And this is hard because in psychology studies, it has been found that most people tend to overestimate their abilities.

By removing the ego, we allow ourselves to let go. Letting go is the only way that creativity may flow. To remove judgement before the work is complete is in my view, essential. You can hone and shape the work, and of course there is a degree of control involved in this aspect, but by controlling the work too much, the flow of creativity will slow and halt. Too many rules, too many constrictions will lead to something that is contrived.

So we have to let go. We have to experiment. And by letting go, we allow the work to go anywhere. We also allow for the work to fail as well as succeed. Because by definition, experimentation means that we do not know what the outcome will be.

Ego is also highly coupled to the ideas of ‘success’ and ‘failure’. I rarely meet anyone who is not overly judgemental of their own work, and either spends time comparing what they did to their best work (self-comparison, and self-judgement), or to others. Rather than just saying ‘the work is what it is’, and understanding that we have an ebb and a flow to our creativity, and our work will vary, and that ‘this is completely normal and ok’, we exert judgement over what we do.

One question I am often asked is ‘how many successful images do you get on a roll of film?’ I used to try to turn the question around in the hope that the issuer of the question is forced to think about what motivated them to ask it in the first place. Because understanding one’s own motivation behind the questions we ask, can teach us a lot about how we view the subject we are discussing.

The language we use, and our choice of words can tell us so much about our selves and our relationships to the external world.

Sure I understand that for many, they just want to understand if my abilities and level of craft are above average, but this still ends up being a judgement, and expectation that some work is better than others and also, that the aim may be to reduce the ‘duds’ in the rolls of film down to just ‘successes’.

The answer I give is: ‘everything I do is a stepping stone to the next thing’. I cannot leap from one ‘successful’ image to another, and so, cutting out those in-between images would be pointless: they have to be made. They are just as important as the images we do want to keep.

With this understood, I believe that nothing is a failure. Everything teaches. You get to where you are from all the experiences you have: bad ones as well as good ones, and so the same is true in photography.

And it is for this reason, that we should try to eradicate the concepts of ‘success’ and ‘failure’ from our own internal language. We have to remove the monkey. We have to let go of our ego.

By doing so, we become free to see where creativity will take us.

Evolution

I’ve been working on a portfolio development class this past few months. So far I have three hours recorded, and the content is a fly-on-the-wall view of myself working on a set of unedited images to final completion as a portfolio.

In my view, this is the best way I can illustrate the processes and thinking behind my own work. And how my work has a stylistically strong angle to it. I’ve been told many times over the years that my style is strong but I also know myself well enough, and feel I have a good handle on my abilities to know where I am in terms of ability and style.

I have one more video to do, which is really about finding one’s style. Many photographers I meet ask me how they will find their style, and I think the first step is to curate one’s own work. If you spend a bit of time reviewing what you do, and do some exercises such as :

1. collect all your best work into a folder

2. try to reduce it down further to the absolute best work

You can gain so much insight into your abilities and also your failings. Style does not come overnight, and in my view it tends to surface slowly. Yet what most do not understand is that if you have a style to your work - it is often present from the very beginning. When I look back at my earlier work I can see it was there, but it was diluted by so many other distractions in the work. Looking back, one can often see the path that we’re on. And this is what you need to do with your photography, if you want to become more aware of where you are as a photographer, and where you may be going.

Creativity is about letting go, and in that way, looking at one’s work, you should try to be as agnostic as you can about it. Let go of personal failure, of feelings of inadequacy or feelings of pride. Just see it for what it is. Be objective. Be honest. It’s an extremely hard thing to do if you are insecure about your work. But I think you must overcome insecurity and just be able to see it for where it is, and be content knowing that you do it for the enjoyment it gives you.

I have always maintained that art is not a competition. It is not for bragging rights. You do it because you love it. And if you are able to tap into who you are and where you are with your work, that awareness alone is hugely beneficial in seeing where you want to go next.

Chronology

I’ve just spent some time over the past week curating the images on my website. To me, my website is like a garden of images. A space in which to let things grow over time.

I have just re-introduced a few portfolios that I couldn’t find space for. There are a few reasons why I take some of the portfolios off-line for a while, but mainly it is due to layout concerns:

1) I may have a portfolio that does not fit with the rest, maybe due to the tonal palette or subject matter.

2) I may have too many portfolios of the same region shot over many years, and in order to give the site some kind of clarity, will remove portfolios which I feel aren’t necessary to convey where my style is going.

3) I think my website is also a place where you can see the adaption or change in my style over time.

4) I am maybe unsatisfied with some of the work, so it gets shelved. Over the years, I have found it increasingly difficult to keep my older work on the site, because it feels too far removed from where I am now. Or I am now quite embarrassed by the work (which in my view is an indication of growth).

I thought it would be good to show the new sections of the site, and perhaps describe how I have chosen to lay them out.

The page above is my most recent work. As a beginner photographer I am convinced I would have considered this work to have no colour whatsoever. But just for comparison, I show you the images below converted to black and white. You can now see that there is indeed colour in the work above. But I am sure for many they may perceive it as having none.

It’s interesting to find that looking at my older work from eight years ago and beyond, the colours feel too strong, too obvious and the older work speaks of trying too hard. It is my own view that muted colour comes from an understanding that you don’t need to shout to get your point across. I’d of course love to think that it comes from a place of maturity (hee hee hee), but I do wonder in all seriousness, that once you get past the need to impress others with your work, you settle into a place where you are comfortable doing what you do, and feel that you’ve figured out just how much contrast and colour is required to make your point.

I’d like to point out that none of this has been done with any premeditated intent. It’s just been an evolution of sorts and I’m never too clear as to whether this is just a case that my tastes have changed over the years, or whether it’s more a case that I’m seeing and noticing things more. I’d of course love to think it’s the latter ;-)

In the page above, if I were to look at this in isolation, I’d maybe assume that my work hasn’t changed much since 2017. It’s only when I do a direct comparison with my more recent work that I can see that the more recent work is taking the colour reduction and subject reduction further. A fine-tuning perhaps? (I’d love to think so!)

But you can see there’s still a bit more colour in this collection of image. I think the muting down of colour has been a learned experience for me. Going to the Fjallabak region of Iceland in winter time (bottom right), where there was almost no colour - I was shooting black and white scenes with colour film, I learned so much from this.

I have often said that certain landscapes, if you meet them at the right time in your own photographic development - can move your photography along in leaps and bounds. I am convinced that had I stayed in IT, and never been able to shoot so much, and go to so many of these winter places over the past 10 years, that my style maybe wouldn’t have moved on so much, if at all. I’m convinced that working in the Interior of Iceland, reducing things down to their utmost basic elements, gave me the permission to attempt to do the same with less empty landscapes.

I’m pleased to re-introduce my Romania, Harris and some of the more minimal Fjallabak portfolios. I’d almost forgotten about them :-) But now that I’ve re-introduced them on my site, I think there’s a more completed story of my own progress (for me at least).

In the page above, you can see there’s a mix of more ‘traditional’ looking landscapes with the graphic elements that I like to play with. At the time of making these, I was thinking that I’d maybe gone as far as I could with simplification. Not that I was consciously trying to strive towards it. Everything I’ve done has been purely emotional, despite others thinking that I deconstruct landscapes. I don’t. I just shoot what appeals to me.

But looking at these, that cone shape in Argentina (top left), taught me so much about the graphic nature of composition. That sometimes shape, is all that’s needed to make a powerful image. I’d certainly say for me, there are a few epiphanies in this collection of work from 2016 to 2017. Working with the Fjallabak region of Iceland allowed me to start to subtract colour, to embrace blacks as negative space. I also find it telling that personally for me, the Altiplano shots here, are not my strongest. I feel that by this point, I had ‘mined’ as much as I could out of the Bolivian altiplano and this was at the tail-end of my work there. I knew my book about Altiplano was almost ready because I was starting to run out of ideas and to see new things in this landscape. I think this is perfectly natural and it either signals that your work in a region has come to an end, or your current level of style and ability can’t go much further in it at present. Perhaps if I return in 10 years time, I may find that I am able to see new things in a old friend?

In the page above, I’ve been able to re-introduce some early work from Iceland’s coastline from 2012, and also some earlier work from the Bolivian altiplano from 2012 (last two portfolios).

By contrasting this page to my more recent work, it’s evident that I’ve been subconsciously on a colour-reduction quest, as well as tonal-distraction-reduction quest also. As I say, none of this was consciously any decision on my part. I just think my style has evolved.

What is interesting to me, is that these images are just on the periphery of what I feel is acceptable to show you. Older work from 2011 back to when I started out - does not work for me at all any more. I find the colours too gaudy and the contrasts too hard, and I feel that in my much older work there was a need to get my point across, perhaps too much.

I do feel that all the landscapes I’ve shot over the years have been great teachers. There are many places that I went to that never amounted to anything (Yosemite valley springs to mind) where I could do nothing with the subject matter, or where I found the location too hard, too difficult to work with (I still think Scotland is like that - there is just too much chaos in the landscape, too much tonal distractions for example). I tend to go back to landscapes that allow me to grow and I think I’m good at figuring out when a landscape allows me to do that.

I have often said that many photographers try to shoot landscapes that are too difficult for their current level of ability. It is much better to focus on the landscapes where you feel you are getting somewhere with. I am convinced that they are growing places for you. It is my view therefore that returning to a key number of places over the years, as I have done, allows for more intimate study and growth of one’s own style. The subject matter to a degree informs the style, and the style to a degree informs what you choose to shoot.

As I said at the beginning of this post today, I look at my website as a garden. I am often able to see where my style has evolved over time, and also how my images in certain landscapes have changed over the years.

Inversions

We should all be pushing the boundaries of our work. We should be trying to push the boundaries of what the norm offers. We can grow so much by entering areas of photography that we have not visited before.

For me, I’m more interested in the edge of reality, of the edge of definition. By inverting my photos I have broken that spell that says ‘this is a capture of reality’, and set a new contract between the viewer and myself. The work is no longer verbatim. Instead it is much more open to being interpreted in any way possible.

You may dislike the work, or find it too strange. But I think that’s good if it generates that kind of response.

For me, I’m just exploring. I have yet to reach an opinion, and indeed, feel that trying to strive for one so early in any direction or path I take would be a bad move.

Right now, I’m just enjoying seeing familiar work anew. I’m noticing different things in familiar images but most importantly, they feel quite different. There is a different atmosphere to these.

Art, photography, craft, whatever you call it. It is allowed to be transient, to be a product of the moment. Why does everything have to be produced with the intention that it last forever?

Grads still have a place in digital photography

Today I’d like to discuss the validity in still using Grads in an age where digital cameras have so much dynamic range that many believe that grads are no longer required. To do this, I need to go over what happens to the exposure when we apply grads.

Yesterday I discussed why using Aperture Priority is better than using Manual, particularly when using grads. Aperture Priority automatically re-balances the exposure as the grad is applied:

As you can see, the grad reduces the difference in contrast between sky and ground. And since the camera wants to take an average between the two values, we find the sky and ground moving towards mid-grey (18%).

In the above illustration you can see that the ground values are now lighter once the grad has been applied. This is key to my post today. When you apply grads, what you are essentially doing is opening up the shadow detail in the histogram / exposure of the photo.

Consider the histogram on the left. No grad was applied, so we end up with a classic ‘double humper’. The ground has been squeezed into the lower tones of the histogram while the sky has been squeezed into the upper registers of the histogram.

Note where 18% grey is.

The ground is essentially underexposed, while the sky is overexposed.

Also consider that the ground is residing in the shadow ‘darker’ area of the histogram. This results in loss of tonal information in the shadows as many dark tones are being quantised. Many tones become one.

Now let’s consider the same image shot with a graduated filter:

The ground values have been moved towards the middle area of the histogram. Same for the sky values. The important points to consider are:

The shadow information has been opened up (marked in red). We now have more tonal information stretching over a longer tonal scale way down into the shadows.

The highlight information has also been opened up (marked in red). We now have more tonal information stretching over a longer tonal scale way up into the highlights.

For me, the main reasons why I use grads are:

1. I wish to avoid underexposed ground and overexposed sky

2. I want to go home with a pleasing negative to work with.

3. I don’t want to have to jump through additional hoops in the processing to figure out if the image is any good. Working with an image where the sky is overexposed and the ground is underexposed isn’t very inspiring at all !

4. if I didn’t grad, I’d have to process every file I shot to see if they were any good before I began work.

5. Working with a nicely balanced exposure straight out of the camera can be, and often is, a very inspiring way of working. You can see straight away whether the composition and image works or not, and I remain engaged.

Engagement is the key for me.

I don’t want to struggle with bad exposures to make them nicer. I want to work with images that inspire me, and that means pleasing, balanced exposures.

If I go home with a nicely balanced exposures, I am more likely to work with them. Conversely, having to trawl through hundreds of images with dark foregrounds and bleached out skies wondering if they might be good once I’ve put them through my editor of choice isn’t going to fuel my creativity. And it’s certainly not going to inspire me.

3rd biggest challenge: removing the urge to impress

Dear reader, before I begin my post today, I wish to state that when I write entries on this blog, they are often written with the intention of stirring some inner thoughts within you. My aim is to help rather than dictate. My view is just that: a view, and often a highly personalised one.

Over the past few weeks I’ve written a few posts about the main obstacles that we have to overcome as photographers. They are:

1. 1st biggest challenge is being original.

2. 2nd biggest challenge is being objective about what we do.

They are as I have stated above, written to stir some inner thought. So I’d like to continue on this vein but feel I must stress that for myself, I do a lot of internalising. I find myself often questioning my own motivations and basically: why I do what I do. I’m never too clear if being too introspective is good or bad. Perhaps it’s both. I don’t know, but what I do know is that I think being aware of my own limitations, hang-ups, problems, strengths, weaknesses is a good thing. Brushing over the darker sides of my personality does not help me when creating my work. Trying to improve my process and the quality of my work often feels as if I have to do some work on myself, and not the art.

The art is a mirror of whom I am.

So with that pre-amble out of the way, I’d like to suggest that the 3rd biggest challenge we all face with our photography is in overcoming the need to impress.

It’s perhaps the most difficult to write about, without perhaps offending someone, or being easily misunderstood. My intentions are to help, not to give you a hard time, but I do think that progress is often hard, and truth can often hurt, and we all have to come face to face with our motivations if we are to be objective in what we do. It’s the only way we will know when our work comes from a good place, or when we are being overcome with a need to impress.

Sure we have to balance, measure and assess our work from time to time, but I think it needs to be devoid of considering how others may value it. If we can remove the need to impress others then I think we’re on the right path to a kind of truthfulness in our work.

Doing what we do because we love it, should come first and foremost.

Indeed, I would go as far as to say that doing what we do because we love it should be all that matters. Whether anyone else gets what we do, loves what we do, hates what we do, should not matter. Because it does not matter. It really doesn’t.

I have learned over the past twenty years from having a small profile that the comments about my work have varied enormously. All I can gather from this is that I will never please everybody and neither should I try to. I could get so lost if I tried.

I think my need to impress comes from times when I lack of confidence in what I do.

No one escapes. Not even the most professional of photographers. Everyone has low periods. Everyone has moments when they doubt what they are doing. It’s perfectly natural to have these moments. All of us, no matter how proficient, will go looking for validation from time to time.

I’ll never get away from this ‘need to impress’ rearing its ugly head from time to time in my psyche. But what I think is important is to realise that these moments are just that, and ultimately, how I feel about my work is the only thing that matters.

Biggest challenge is being original

I’ve been thinking recently, that my blog has been about one thing: about trying to work on our creativity, with the aim of producing work that is our own.

We live in an age now, where there is a glut of good work. It’s now a case that making well crafted images is something that is within the grasp of many.

What I’ve been thinking about lately, is that I think we need to celebrate originality a lot more. Being able to produce a nicely crafted image is fine, but I think we need to be thinking about how to foster and develop our own individuality - or perhaps ‘originality’?

Which I suppose leads to the question - what is originality? Is there indeed such a thing as being original? Or isn’t everybody just influenced by everyone else? In other words, isn’t it ok to go to all the same places that everyone else is going to, and to make similar images as everyone else?

“I was there all along,
except that all my influences were mostly so strong,
that I just couldn’t see me in the work at all.”

Everyone’s images, even the highly-influenced close copies of our heroes work will have elements of ourselves in them. You are always in the images you make, even if you choose to go and make a homage to the work that inspired you. It’s just that it’s quite hard to see who you are from the layers of influences that are often overlapping and perhaps hiding you, from you.

When I look back at my earlier photographs, most of course showed very strong influences in Kenna’s work, and also Galen Rowell’s work. I was always attracted (at the beginning) to strong colour and dramatic compositions. My photography has changed a lot over the years but as I look back, I can see traces, elements of ‘me’ in my emulations of my heroes work. I was there all along, except that all my influences were mostly so strong that I just couldn’t see me there at all.

It is only with a great deal of insight, self-reflection and looking at my older work, that I’m able to see ‘me’ in my work. There is an audit-trail in the chronology of my work that shows my style adapting and changing, but there has always been something in the work that has always inherently been ‘me’. It’s that part of the image making that you can’t seem to change. That’s you. It’s who you are. And you need to find it, embrace it, and let it grow.

It’s really hard to find out who you are as an artist and I think it only becomes obvious over a great amount of time, and a great amount of image making and by looking back. Over time, I think we surface, and when we go and look at the earlier work, can often see more clearly that we were there all along.

The biggest challenge in photography now, is in being individualistic. Being individualistic means you’re creating work that others aren’t. It also just makes photography for all of us a whole lot more interesting!

But being an individual is a tough place to be. When you follow a trend, you are (in my view) conforming. And you’re not leading. But conversely, when you are doing your own thing, it’s a much lonelier place to be, because you aren’t part of the pack. It also means you have to be strong to follow your convictions, and not care that what you are doing, isn’t widely accepted. Heck, you may even find that what you are doing isn’t appreciated, or understood by others. That’s the price of being different from everyone else.

And this brings me to this point: being more original about what you do, means caring less (or not at all) about what others think of your work. It means having the confidence to follow your own convictions, and follow a path that no one else may be on.

For me, the web and many platforms show a lot of accomplished work. But the icing on the cake, is to do something that helps you stand out from that massive volume of proficient work.

Biggest challenge facing photographers now, Is not being proficient. It’s in being original.

Momentum

For a long while, I’ve often had problems with creative-momentum.

Sometimes I find it very hard to get something started, and once I have managed to achieve a sense of flow to my process, I’m loathe to halt it.

I have found on many occasions that ‘life’ gets in the way of the set of images I’m currently editing. You know the stuff, commitments, an invitation to go out with friends, got to go to work, all of it was a hassle for me. Especially if I found myself at 3am in the middle of an editing session and I was loathe to go to bed because I had ‘just one more photo’ to edit.

Similarly, when I have stalled something due to commitments, I used to be worried that leaving it hanging in the air, unresolved, would somehow mean I’d lose something critical. I was terrified of not being able to pick up the threads later on, or worse still, find that the moment had passed and the passion I had felt for the work was, well, no longer there. It used to cause me a great deal of angst.

I think it all stemmed from a sense of fragility. Creating work is like a birth. But due to the many decisions that you can make (and make wrongly) the birth process is fraught with the possibility of things not reaching their full potential. It was hard for me to walk away from something I was in the middle of, hard to press ‘pause’ and then leave it for weeks while I was busy with something else. I hated it because I was always full of doubt as to whether I would like the work when I was able to return to it. Imagine finally getting back to something, only to discover it’s not as good as you had thought it was?

Then about four or five years ago, I just found I’d run out of steam. I had reached the end of a workshop year and the last thing I was wanting to do was work on any images. But I had a set of images, indeed many sets of images that I had shot that year, which were all now sitting in a pile in my home studio waiting for me to look at them, to appreciate them. I couldn’t face it.

So I did what I never do.

I parked them to one side and despite feeling that doing so, I’d never ever work on them again. I chose to put off working on them, because I’d much rather prefer to work on something when I’m feeling it than work on it when I’m not. It is perhaps the worst sin we can do as creative people: work on something when we’re not into it. It’s disrespectful, as we need to give our work the attention it deserves. I mean why bother spending $$$ and hours out in the field, if you’re going to be rushed at editing the work?

So I parked them. Some of them for months, and some were parked for a year. Others are still parked many years later.

I didn’t know when, or if I would work on these images. I just felt I needed to give them some time, and myself some space from them. Distance, as I’ve written many times before can give clarity, and also time for us to re-charge, get enthused about what we’re into.

And this is exactly what happened with some of the images about six months later. And then a year later I did it again. It was new territory for me to find out that I would still get engaged in work that I had created months, or even a year before. But I did, and I took comfort in knowing that just because I did not feel the need to work on the images straight away, it didn’t mean the work was garbage. It just meant the time was wrong. I learned that it’s best to let thing sleep if I’m not feeling it. And to just wait until the time I do feel like working.

My original fears of losing momentum on the shoot, of not remembering what it was that I was doing, or leaving the work for so long that I would have very little connection to it turned out to be false. I got into the work, but I did it when I was ready.

These days, I now have a pile of work sitting in my home studio, which I now trust myself to get around to at some point. I think that trust is the key word here. I trust myself. Because before this, I don’t think I ever did trust myself. I was too precious about my work, and felt that if I didn’t deal with it straight away, I’d loose momentum on it.

I now enjoy the fact that I have a backlog of work to work on. It means I have something saved up, something in the store. Just in case the well runs dry, or I can’t get out and shoot. I like that. It’s like being a song-writer that has a stock of songs to work on. So if there are days when I can’t come up with new melodies, I have these unfinished songs to work on.

Before I finish up today, I would like to stress that I am no procrastinator. But I do think many people are. Please don’t assume that I condone ‘putting off working at your photography’. If you are a procrastinator then I can see you easily take up my words as validation to keep on procrastinating. Today’s post is not for you.

If, however you are someone who works very hard, but gives yourself a hard time, most of the time, for not working harder, then I am glad you’ve made it this far in my post today. My message is really aimed at those that plough on regardless with their photography, and don’t stop to think that maybe they are over-worked, or not really in-touch with what they’re creating. By letting the work take a back-seat for a while, even a very long while, it may be the best thing for it.

As with anything, it’s a case of knowing when you’re in the creative zone, and when you aren’t. If you aren’t, then perhaps it’s best to sleep on the work for a few days, months or sometimes just file it away for some time in the future.