Just A Man With A Camera

I feel like I've been hitting a wall this last month.  There were two small projects that I worked on that really did not go quite as planned. I started writing this as two separate posts talking about each individual project because they were both quite different. However, the more I thought about it I relalized that at it's core they were about the same subject. 

They were two very different projects, involving trying something different and learning new editing techniques. So there was never any garauntee that it would go exactly as planned, but neither came out as good as I had hoped and it's been kind picking at me. There the part of my brain that is being rational and telling myself that I need to be happy that I at least tried something new, but then there's that side that loves to come out and say "what's the point?" (Here comes that asshole again).  It's tough because nothing came out particularly bad and I should be considering it good practice, but it still feels like I took a few L's in a row. It's difficult to get out of my head and continue being positive and push forward sometimes.

So what were the projects? One of them was my first attempt one of my photography goals or the year: photographing the milky way.  Last week my wife and I took some time off work to visit some family who live south of Winnipeg. The weather and moon phase were going to be perfect to attempt to get the shot while we were there. I bought the PhotoPills app for Android to plan a shot and my wife and I stayed up late to try and get it.  After shooting, watching videos about editing milky way photos, and doing my own edits here's what I came out with: 

It's not a terrible image, and if you squint hard and look right down the centre you can see it a little bit of the milky way. I think I just really had my hopes up that even though it was very faintly visible, I though I could save it in the edit. For as dark as it was looked when we looked up at the sky, I recognized quickly that we were too close to the city, which brought too much light pollution. So that was a dissappointment, and then there was e addition of the fact that I couldn't save it in the edit that just kind of put me in a bad spot about how it all turned out. I'm trying to not get me down though, and my wife and I have a plan visit one her family members' farm next month to take another stab at it.  Hopefully this time we're far enough out of town and the weather co-operates enough for this to work out.

The other project that I have put me in this crappy headspace was an attempt at doing some headshots of my wife and a friend of ours that again didn't go as well as I hoped. I wanted practice doing headshots, and our friend said she would be willing to sit in front of my camera with my wife. Additionally, I wanted to have some images that I could practice doing some retouching on. Lately I have been watching videos about various aspects of portraiture involving simple studio headshots, posing models, and then re-touching them in post.

We shot for about an hour and I only got a few images that I was really satisfied with. I know it had nothing to do with my models, but with my direction.  I feel like the the majority of the head-and-shoulds headshots felt more like passport photos than anything. We then moved to a larger backdrop that I had set up.  Maybe it was that we felt too cramped in that space, maybe it was my lighting, or maybe it was my direction, but I also didn't feel like I came out of that with as much good stuff as I wanted. When it comes to posing, there's no way around it: I suck. I have little experience with it, and no matter how much I read and watch on the subject, when it comes time to tell someone what to do it feels like I come out with "just stand there and look good". I like to think that I'm sure it will get better with more practice, but it doesn't help that I am just naturally an awkward person which is likely why for I have primarily photographed still life, animals, streets, and landscapes. As for the re-touching, that's the one thing that I'm not really unhappy with. It was my first time trying new techniques, and to follow instructions involving using tools and theory from a course that used Photoshop, but then applying them to Affinity Photo 2. As I worked through the images I was getting a better hang of it and things were progressing quicker.

Like I said about the milky way shot, these aren't terrible images. The more I think about it and reflect as I write this, I'm think more than anything I'm disappointed in myself and my experience.  Or more accururately lack thereof. I feel like I am behind.  Like I should know these things already or be better at them for as long as I have been taking pictures. Like this is something that I should have gotten out of the way in my 20s and not when I'm pushing 40 and trying to make a run at this photography thing. I've been trying to keep that annoying voice that says "what's the point" at bay for so long that when things don't work, it seems to come back with a vengeance. I want to make this leap from feeling like an amateur to someone who can be comfortable with calling himself a professional, but I'm just not there yet.