Why is the ability to connect with others so important in documentary photography? Well, because you’re in the privacy of someone’s home, observing them in their most intimate relationships, where they are the most vulnerable. There aren’t very many families that would invite you (a stranger) into this very sacred place, let alone “act natural” while you’re there. Let’s face it, that’s even a tough task to ask ourselves to accomplish. Which is why connecting with people is so vital to achieving authentic photos.

“Connection is the energy that is created between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued–when they can give and receive without judgment.” Brene Brown

Based on this definition of connection, I grew up in a home having none. I come from a broken family and with it came broken connections. It wasn’t an environment anyone in my life meant to put me in, but sometimes a culmination of life choices made by others that came before you, lands in your lap and you’re left trying to figure out how to undo it all. This heavy past combined with the fact that I’m an introvert, made it difficult, to say the least, for me to connect with people.

Over the years I’ve learned that if part of connecting means to “feel seen, heard, and valued” then empathy plays a huge role here. Have you ever had a really bad day, and a friend or family member understood exactly how you felt, as if they were in your brain? It feels both amazing and relieving at the same time.

The ability to identify with what another feels, whether that feeling is big or small, is a skill that comes so naturally to some. I am not one of them. For me, it’s something I had to learn, practice, and have yet to master.  But each day that I encounter someone new is an opportunity for me to get better at this skill.

So what is the point in sharpening this skill?

We are social beings and have been created with a need for connection. There’s a reason we live in communities and not isolated caves on a 3 acre island.  Showing empathy let’s others know that they are seen, heard and valued, which fosters connection, and leads to people knowing that you are human. This is how your clients connect with you and start to forget that you’re a photographer. Instead, you become this very pleasant person that just so happens to be hanging out for the day. Now doesn’t that sound much more relaxing than a stranger pointing a camera at you?

And that’s all any of us want in this life: to know that you are not some robotic creature with perfect life formulas, no history of malfunctions, and a fail rate of zero. No. People want to see that you’re human, flaws and all.

Show them that, and they’ll show YOU that while you snap away.

What are some ways you get your clients to “act natural”?

 

 

Photography, as an artistic medium, naturally tends towards the emotional side of things – photographs evoke emotion; we take photos to remember, to celebrate. Especially if you are a parent photographing your children, it is hard to take emotion out of it. As photographers, we also seem to be constantly told that we must put emotion into our work, that our photos should evoke emotion in others. Hell, there are countless workshops & ebooks out there with names like ‘how to evoke emotion during family sessions’, ‘capturing emotion’, ‘the art of emotion’, ‘capturing true emotion’, ‘the emotional child’, ‘adding emotion & feeling to photographs’ & so on & so forth. The list is endless.

But here’s the thing, I think we have misinterpreted all of this emotion. Of course we want to photograph emotions, because what is life without them? But we need to take the emotion out from behind the lens. We need to separate the emotion from the artist. Taking the emotion out of our work will help make us better photographers – it will help us with making better photographs in the first place, help with culling & curating our work & it will help us deal with where we are at as artists, as opposed to where we want to be.

Let’s take a look at how this will help.

When making your photographs, concentrating on the basics of composition, framing, micro composition, just to name a few things that you should be looking for, should help you to take technically stronger photos. For me, concentrating on those things helps me to detach a little from the emotional aspect of taking a photo(especially when it is of your own children.

When culling your photographs it is best to take a step back before viewing what you have taken. I usually wait at least a week or two before viewing photographs that I have taken. That way, I am a little more detached & less likely to make decisions on what photographs to keep & which to toss based on emotion. This, for me, helps me get down to the best photos that I had taken in the session, rather than having my judgement clouded by all of that emotional attachment. I can ask myself, ‘do I think that this photograph is good because of the emotion that I have attached to it, or is it actually good on it’s on merit?’ & answer honestly.

When curating your photographs leaving emotion at the door will help you select your best work to showcase. When those Mum/Dad goggles are removed, we can see more clearly & analytically what is well & truly our best work. No one wants to see 200 photos in a blog post because you couldn’t decide on which photos to share because you are too attached to them.

Submitting work for critique, competitions, exhibitions or anywhere that your work will be judged, is hard. It’s even harder when you can’t separate your personal attachment to a photograph. Receiving critique on a photo that you are emotionally attached to makes it feel like you are being kicked in the guts when ever someone points out areas or improvement or that the photo doesn’t actually work at all. If you have acted as the emotional gatekeeper before submitting the photo in the first place, you will be better placed to receive any feedback that could help improve your work.

So basically, I’m saying keep the emotion in front of the camera while being an emotionless husk behind it!

 

“I live a creative life, and you can’t be creative without being vulnerable. I believe that Creativity and Fear are basically conjoined twins; they share all the same major organs, and cannot be separated, one from the other, without killing them both. And you don’t want to murder Creativity just to destroy Fear! You must accept that Creativity cannot walk even one step forward except by marching side-by-side with its attached sibling of Fear.”

~Elizabeth Gilbert, from Daring Interview Series with Brene Brown

 

Boy, does this quote from my soul sister Elizabeth Gilbert speak to my artist heart of hearts. Can you remember the first time you experienced fear as it relates to your photography? I’ve noticed that as my photography has grown and become a truer reflection of who I am as an artist, fear and doubt have accompanied me. It feels vulnerable and scary to be who you really are, and to make the art that only you can make. But it’s also beautiful and amazing and gratifying.

But back to Fear. About 2 years ago I made a big, scary decision to pursue documentary photography in my personal work as well as my business. For me, documentary photography was initially scary because it’s my real (very non-Pinterest) life portrayed in the photographs. It felt vulnerable to show the reality of life with 3 little ones, but also strangely gratifying and pressure-releasing. Like if I could summon the courage to show the not-so-glamorous aspects of parenthood, maybe others could too. Still, these questions and doubts haunted me. Would anyone like any of my photos, or would they be all crap?! Would any client ever hire me again to make these kinds of photos for their own family? Would their eyes bug out when I tell them they don’t need to clean their house or buy matching outfits? Would they pay my newer, more expensive rates?? Fear fear fear was right there with every decision I made.

Rejection is a close cousin of Fear. No one likes to be rejected, and therefore we tend to mitigate the risk of rejection by only putting ourselves out there when we believe the odds are highly in our favor. I’ll admit that I am definitely risk-averse, so for a long time just owning and running my photography business and the decisions that entailed was risky enough for me. Slowly but surely I’ve branched out a bit and threw my hat into a few other artistic endeavors related to photography. Many of them ended poorly. I wasn’t selected for this or that, none of my photos were selected for this or that, and I will admit that sometimes the rejection put me in a funk. Then one of my fellow photographer friends set me straight. She said, “If we’re not getting rejected on a regular basis, we’re not putting ourselves out there often enough.” I stepped back to collectively look at the work that I’d recently created, and I could not have been more pleased. So despite the disappointment, I dusted myself off and got back to work.

What do you have your sights on, but the Fear of Rejection is holding you back? Is it raising your prices, applying to a Pro division, pitching an idea for a class, entering photos into an image competition, submitting an idea to write for a popular blog? What’s holding you back? Consider this my challenge to you to wrack up some choice rejections this year! If the opposite happens, I’ll be the first to celebrate with you, but if you experience a rejection, know that you’re in good company. And the only thing left to do is pick up that camera and get back to work.

NOTE: All the images contained in this blog post were rejected in some way, shape or form. And I LOVE them.

“She was unstoppable. Not because she did not have failures or doubts, but because she continued on despite them.”

~Beau Taplin

One thing I hear over and over in photography forums is that the photographer is bummed because their kids have grown and they no longer have them at home all day to take sweet photos of them anymore. Or that their children are not interested in letting them have their picture taken anymore. As a mom of many children, mine range in age from almost 3 to 24, I have had to really work to keep documenting my children even when they are not home so much. Even now with 2 of my children married, I still document them when I can.

Number one for me is to respect when they don’t want their photos taken. It is hard for me. I know that when they are grown they will be happy to have images from these times too but I need to treat them with respect and honor. It is not every time they say no thankfully, but when they do I move on.

In my experience those teen years are harder to document. Are your teens involved in extracurricular activities? Dance, scouting, band? Documenting them while they are involved in doing something they love is a great opportunity to get your camera out and they are more relaxed about having the camera out.

Do you still have younger kids at home? It is wonderful to be able to document the sibling relationships. My children love to play board games with their oldest brother. What do your children enjoy doing together? Do they shoot hoops? Rough house?  Maybe take your camera out and grab some shots of them heading off to the movies or shopping. I love documenting the different relationships between my older children and my little ones.

What new things are happening in your children’s lives? Are they packing up their rooms to move to a dorm? What about capturing them loading up their car? Setting up their room? Maybe your adult is starting a new job. Maybe they will be open to you coming by and taking a few pictures of their office or shopping for work clothes. Some things that I have done are document their relationships with their friends and future spouses. My oldest son has asked me to do some sessions for he and his now wife. I was honored to be capturing a session for them when he proposed.

It is not the same as they get older and are not with me all day the way my younger children are but I love capturing all the stages of my children’s live’s. As your children get older it makes it more challenging to find those moments but the moments that you are able to document are so meaningful to you and to them. I always print out copies of images I have taken of them to give to them. They love having photos hanging in the homes.