Urge to "move"
Taken with a Nikon D50 and Nikon 70-300mm f/4-5.6G lens
Many people have the urge to move, to do sports. If they just sit around, they get nervous, they simply need to move to be happy. And in doing so, they follow targets: win the local soccer cup, reach a specific summit, run a marathon under n minutes. Some people are "loners", they find their happiness in reaching their personal summits (hikers, some sailors, runners etc.), for others the social component is part of their happiness, e.g. soccer or basketball players. Many of the latter would not see any sense in running around alone all by themselves, and vice versa. Important: all of them have specific goals, specific points in their doing they want to reach.
Many of us have the same urge to "move" in our mind. We "create", be it photography, be it writing, be it painting or combinations of all of these (like creating a good internet site about photography). We get nervous and feel "empty" without doing anything, so we need to make our brain "move". Many of us do this for themselves, like lonely hikers, simply enjoying the moment of creation or the memories coming up when going through our work at night. For others, sharing the moment of creation, or sharing the results, is more important. These are the team players.
What we often miss in our "moving" is the goal: we love to take pictures, we love to write, to paint, to play the piano. But we don't know what for: with 300 new pictures on the disk, with a lovely short story on paper, with a nice painting on the shelf, we still feel "empty" simply because we have no real end in doing so. In my opinion, this is were NAS (Nikon acquisition syndrom) and similar gear related syndroms start: these are targets, we want to posses, to buy, like good old caveman hunters: get the lens, get the body, and as a result one day you will feel it, have it in your hands, it's YOURS, you have reached your personal target of the day.
Only that once it's yours, you start looking out for the next target.
In my personal opinion, to reach "happiness" in our field of creative arts, one needs to set goals on the creative side. Not gadget goals, but goals linked to results. For the lonesam hiker, other than filling the 50th DVD with the next 100 red-sky-early-morning pictures (with no end in sight), the creation of the one "perfect" picture book of a specific theme, area, mountain, whatever. With exactly 50 pics, the real, the perfect ones. This way, he will still take 1000 pics on a trip, but with the goal to find the perfect one of this theme, the satisfaction on doing so, then moving on to the next theme, the next perfect picture for THE book.
For team players, the goal could be the "perfect" wedding book, working on a concept where each wedding, each event is thoroughly checked (customer feedback, new requests etc.), until we have the perfect feeling, the knowledge that we can deliver, not just a bunch of pictures, but THE pictures the customer wants.
Improve on pictures, on presentations, on technique: the result counts. And good results will not only fill the emptiness in our creative mind, but they will drag us on: it's like a perpetuum mobile, it keeps us going. But we need to define a goal, a target, an end to our creative process. Be it a picture book, a portrait of our community or family, an internet site, whatever. Once we have goals, we know what we are aiming at, what we need to improve, what we still miss.
Labels: AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4-5.6G, Landscape, Nikon D50, Philosophy of Photography, Photography
