Trusting Our Experience

Our world is busy.  We are in a social situation most of our lives, whether we acknowledge it or not.  Even when we are alone, we are making decisions.  What we do affects others, and eventually finds its way back to us.  When we share something with someone, it changes us.  And it is very easy to get caught up, lost, in the response that they have to what we have shared.  This is true of sharing photographs, as well as other forms of art and creativity.  The tendency to want others to like what we create is very strong, and it often gets in the way of our own ability to enjoy our experience.

One example of this is when we enter our work in a contest.  We may take a photograph that evokes a strong emotion in us, or makes us inspired to go out and take more photos of the same subject matter.  We may begin to feel that we could find better compositions, more dramatic colors or lighting, more evocative arrangements of the same objects so that others might really be impressed by what we’ve done.  We might spend hours looking, put up with frustration and repeated failure in search of just the right conditions to make our images look the way we want them to.  And when we finally see the results of the judges, we find that our work has paid off.  Some of our photos have won prizes.  We may have even received a Best of Show for one of them.  We feel elated, overjoyed, and want to show all our friends in hopes that they, too, might have the same reaction.

But when we share our images with someone we trust, such as a family member or close friend, we may find that they can’t connect fully with one or two of them.  We may be met with a look of confusion, or by a well-intended critique, by this person we were certain would “get it.”  Do we shy away, thinking that what made us so inspired was really not all that great after all?  Or, do we get angry, thinking “well, they just don’t understand me and my feelings.”  We could very easily become discouraged about what we are doing and want to give up.

This is where the creative process gets interesting.  When we are praised for our work, it is easy to feel good about it, and about ourselves.  But when someone else questions us, or tells us that “it would be better if you only changed this little part,” it throws us off.  What do we do in this situation?  How do we remain confident about what we are doing, and keep from shutting down or closing ourselves off from our own experience? 

It comes down to a very individual situation.  Whether or not we defend ourselves isn’t entirely the question.  However, it may be necessary to resist the urge to explain away our reasons and our process.  We have to realize, first, that no one can really tell us what we saw or know why we chose to photograph our perception in the exact way that we did.  We are the only ones who can do that.  And second, we need to remember that not every person is going to understand, immediately, every photograph that we take.  It doesn't mean our experience is less valid, or that we should delete or throw away our images.  Oftentimes the images no one seems immediately to understand are the ones we ourselves can learn from the most, and may end up opening doors we never imagined possible.

In the end, it is the quality of our own experience, not the value judgments placed upon it by others, that is most important.  If our experience is genuine, and it is communicated clearly in the image, that is all that matters.  All the rest is secondary.

You can view a slideshow of my images from around the time I wrote this entry here.

Warm regards,

Cody Flory Robertson