Lights, Camera……Oh My……

Sometimes in life we hear things that we don’t like and can take these words very personally and despite our best effort to have tough skin, they hurt. Last night my photographs were critiqued in class and it was absolutely brutal…..brutal… ….especially since I was feeling confident that I had done a decent job for my first assignment. First off, they were projected on a ten foot screen, and my own initial reaction upon seeing them this big was…yuk…..That looks like crap. Therefore, it was no surprise that Jones, my teacher, had nothing nice to say about them either. In fact, probably his lack of words and body reaction certified how unimpressed he was. Now, Jones is a; grey haired, hat wearing, Vietnam Vet, beer drinking, chain smoking, full of life, quick witted, great story teller and a no “B.S” kind of guy – a character straight out of a movie . He reminds me of an old Indiana Jones armed with a camera, instead of a whip. He's been a professional photographer since he has 19 years old, and knows his business. Anyway, I see my errors and I understand exactly what he is talking about, but it hurt my ego nonetheless. The photographs from the other students received similar reactions, and his critiques were spot on, there was not one picture where I thought he was being too harsh, but rather thought it was constructive criticism, but when the critic falls on something you’ve created, it can be hard to remove the rose colored glasses.

As I left class and drove out of the parking lot, I was experiencing a physical reaction that I can best describe as shaken, not stirred….and not the 007 persona of confidence with martini in hand, but as if I was the martini inside that silver cylinder being thrashed up and down, then poured into a glass and swallowed whole. I had to remind myself that I am a student of photography and shouldn’t be so hard on myself and actually try and learn something from this dreadful experience. I mean these were the first pictures I took whereby I actually set my camera on Manual and had to figure out the lighting and composition in relation to my lens and all that jazz…..all this technical stuff to do with a camera gets my mind in a flurry. Jones talks a million miles a minute about f-stops and shutter speeds, in comparison to the distance of the subject , in relation to the light and equivalencies being in multiples and oh my……. I understand it in theory, but need to understand it like I understand the alphabet. So, like any good student, I will be doing a lot of homework this week to engrain these concepts in my mind so that they become second nature to me. I won’t let this brutal experience detour me from doing what I love…it will only make me work harder, learn more and strive to be better. I guess I’ve forgotten what it is like to fail on a test in school….