When you put your mind to it.
Initial confidence
My first attempt at cutting hair.
I have the tendency to sometimes overestimate my ability to do things. Like the time I decided that cutting my children’s hair would be a good idea. We just moved from Taunton (UK) to Windsor, near London and a haircut here, compared to in Taunton, costed an arm and a leg. I thought it would be a good idea to buy proper hairdresser’s scissors, as if this would be the magic trick, and cut my children’s hair myself. Well of course, no surprise there! The scissors doesn’t do the job, you still need to know what you are doing. All the many tutorials I watched, also didn’t guarantee a good cut. Halfway through cutting my daughter’s hair, I suddenly realised that I have attempted something that was not going to end well. That initial confidence I had, and how I thought I would be able to do it just as good as a hairdresser, suddenly changed to a “What was I thinking” moment. I was now halfway through a haircut, the sides were uneven, the layers looked “choppy” and there is no way I would be able to hide this mistake or make it un done. Of course my daughter was hysterical when she looked in the mirror and I felt the need to throw the scissors in the bin. After everybody calmed down, I “re-grouped” and I decided that I am not giving up. Even though I would have liked the first haircut to be perfect, I knew that success would only come with practice. It’s also when we start to think about the reason for starting something that we have the motivation to see it through.
Realisation
Maybe on some level, this is how we approach most things in life. First of all, we think we can, then we try and then we realise it’s not that easy. This is the point where we either give up and move on, or we decide to push through and make it work.
The Scissors don’t make the cut
When I decided to take the camera and start to do photography, I went through the same process. The picture in my mind was not always the picture I got. Just as the expensive, professional hairdressing scissors didn’t make the haircut, so I realised that the camera is only my tool and that there is much more to getting the shot right than just pressing a button. What’s in the frame was going to be up to me and I had much more to learn to get the perfect shot. Giving up was not an option now because I have passed the 20 hour mark (20 hour theory) and photography was something I enjoyed doing. Learning by doing seemed to be the best way forward. Going out and shoot, was now to be my daily fix.
Capture the moment
I realised very soon that some photographs are just possible in a split second. It can never be recreated as it was at that moment. This idea to me is the magic of photography.
When I started photographing every day it became apparent that the same place has a different look and feel on different times of the day. The weather also plays an important role and can change the backdrop of the photograph totally from one hour to the next. Then of course depending on the season, the colour of the light changes, the surroundings looks different and in a way, people also act differently. The exact same setting can give so many different images just based on these variables. This makes going out, and without knowing what to expect, photography so interesting and a wonderful way of getting practice in shooting in manual.
Some days were better than others. There was always that one picture that made me so excited even if many did not work as well as I hoped. I held on to the story of the couple who went on holiday and forgot to take the bath plug out of the bath and so in the time they were away, the dripping tap almost filled the whole bath. I just thought that if I could be like the dripping tap and gather all the drops, in the sense of good or bad photographs, I will gain more experience and knowledge, and I would have a full “bath tub” after a while.
My motivation for starting is still my motivation for continuing. I now enjoy looking back at my first photographs because I know that if I did not start there, I would not be where I am today, still learning, still gaining experience, still growing.