In a funk!

Lately, I find myself in a photographic funk. What is a photograph funk? I am glad you asked!

I hate every photograph I shoot. Nothing seems worthy of being photographed, and I can barely stand the thought of pressing the shutter release on another photograph, only to be disappointed with how it will look. My studio lighting system is driving me nuts. All my photographs seem soft and fuzzy. I spend hours setting up and shooting stills only to find flaws in my backgrounds. I have several ideas for shots written down, but either my studio (aka whatever room in the house I set up in) is inadequate for the shot, I can't find the right natural background, or I don't have the right equipment (flash guns, umbrellas, soft boxes, macro lens, etc.) For many of my ideas I need models, but I have no idea how to work with models, and without the right equipment I would just end up wasting their time for shots I will still hate.

Add to all that the amount of information bouncing around in my head that I still don't fully understand. Every potential shot now presents me with what feels like 100 different questions, each of which must be answered correctly, or the shot is a failure. Which lens should I use? What settings should I choose? Shallow depth of field or deep DOF? Zoom in or go wide? How should I frame the shot? Flash or no flash. If I use the flash, do I bounce it off a wall, use a bounce card, or diffuse with a cup? What about the flash exposure compensation, move it up or down? What ISO? Which is more important, to freeze action or risk noise? Where is the natural light (if any) coming from? How will this impact the photograph? I mostly understand each of these concepts separately, but putting them all together in a way that works requires experience I don't yet have.

I am in a funk!

OK. Enough whining. Every photograph is work right now, and that is not going to cut it. One of the great things about photography is how fun it can be. I need some of that back. I really do want to be successful in stock photgraphy, but the reality is most of my shots will have no commercial value at all. If I maintain that as a standard, I will continue to hate my own work until I have no confidence in my abilities at all (I am almost there now).

I think I am going to spend the next week or two just taking tons of photographs with no expectations on them at all. Maybe they will all flop, but maybe there will be a few that are keepers. Either way, I hope that gets me back in the saddle. Experience only comes from doing something a LOT, and I clearly need the experience that comes from shooting a LOT more photographs.