In life, it seems that a lot of people try to become perfect in order to impress others. They work some boring job to buy shit they don’t need to impress others that don’t even like them. This is something that is sad, but pretty true at the end of the day. What can we do about this? Let the chips fall as they may!
“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.” – Tyler Durden
Let’s evolve
The whole point of humanity is to evolve. We must transcend and go beyond our basic traditional notions of how to live our lives.
How does this relate to photography?
In terms of making photographs, I believe that we should embrace imperfection, and not be caught up with composition and making everything so perfectly aligned and fit a traditional picture that would be considered “good” to some teacher or judge for a contest. In order to go beyond our capabilities within the realm of photography, we must forget everything we think we know, and make pictures without any consideration for all the traditional aspects of what makes something perfect. We don’t want to be perfect! In street photography we strive to be real, authentic, raw, and gritty.
My frustration with photography
Currently, I’m frustrated with photography. I feel as though the industry sells this lie to the masses that in order to become a better photographer, you must become perfect and polished. You must embrace sharpness, make perfect compositions, make pictures with pretty backgrounds, have beautiful models, etc. I say this is all BS and it makes things more mediocre if anything. In street photography, it’s also becoming very trendy and boring. When photographers view other work, they become poisoned and influenced by their ways of understanding what street photography is.
Boring people care too much
The only people that watch YouTube, comment on Reddit posts, use Instagram, and have the time of the day to use these things, are boring and base people. We do not want to be boring and we do not want to be basic. We desire to become the next level! In order to achieve this, you have to ruffle a few feathers, and do some things that are going to upset others. Perhaps to be imperfect, is to be human. There’s no such thing as a perfect person, a perfect picture, or perfect anything.
How to combat this?
- Delete your Instagram
- Stop watching YouTube
- No more Reddit
- Don’t view work in galleries
To be honest, all these modes of viewing work have become the gateway to mediocrity. You either get it, or you’re upset by it. Stop consuming other peoples work, and make your own world. Craft your vision through intuition and repetition. Make pictures with the autotelic mindset, and make sure you continue propagating your voice on your own platforms. Don’t be a slave to social media, conventional ways of thinking, ideology, or anyone’s morals, dogmas, etc.
Why does it matter?
I believe this matters because we actually have to go further with our creative potential. In order to evolve in move forward with things, we must embrace imperfection and try things. We must tinker, innovate, mess up, fall down, take blurry pictures, missed shots, etc. in order to become the apex version of ourselves.