What's Inspiring Me Today

I did a photo shoot today and it seems like everything went wrong.

It was cold.
It was muddy.
It was threatening to rain.
The batteries in my flash died mid-shoot.

Not only that, but I felt like I had hit a creative wall. My head and my heart just weren't into it today, yet I was getting paid to take these photos. I had to capture shots that would deliver good results.

What inspired me and kept me going was this quote I read this past week from Ira Glass. I'd love to share it with you. It's a little long but so incredibly good:


"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only be going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take a while. It's normal to take a while. You've just gotta fight your way through." ~Ira Glass

I could not have put it better myself! What draws me to photography is beauty. I want every shot I take to end up looking beautiful. Right now, I'd say 1 out of every 100 shots I'm taking right now are ones that I'm super proud of.

The hard part is that the only way for my "work to be as good as my ambitions" is to practice a ton. In this case it means being willing to shoot, shoot, shoot and end up with crappy shots day after day, week after week.