Sometimes we need a reality check...

Tonight I was stressin'....yes, I spelled it without the "g" - so what. Often times if I have no editing to do, I'll do research. I read other photographer's blogs, read up on the latest gadgets and technology and even spend time in photoshop/lightroom just practicing. Yes, I will pull up images and practice re-editing them - seeing what I like for the future and what I don't. In the midst of this, I found myself in a, what I call, photo-funk. Think about it this way, a new song comes out. It's the hottest song ever. It's number 1 on all the charts. You see the artist perform it on the MTV movie awards, at the Grammys, at the Today Show, etc. You can randomly flip through your radio stations and hear the song at least twice on different stations, not to mention you have your iPod hooked up to your car stereo and have been blasting it for an hour already. Yes, a bit over kill, but this is the best analogy I can think of. After several weeks, that song, that was the best song ever - starts to suck. It starts to get annoying. And, instead of getting excited when you hear it on the radio, you change the station. SAME THING WITH MY EDITING! I see an image so many times, it starts to suck. I begin to hate it. I feel like no corrections work. I then begin to curse my computer and visions of that scene from OFFICE SPACE fill my thoughts (yes, the one where they bash the copy machine). I try to convince myself to just throw my iMac through the window, that should fix my issues. It's hard looking at your own work sometimes, well, a lot of the time. I just tell myself - FEDEX......yes, FEDEX. I got the chance to work with an amazing photographer once - Peter Hurley. He was shooting my headshots and is known as the best headshot photographer in America and has three studios for doing just that in NYC, LA & DALLAS. He's legit. After each "look" we shot, we sat at the computer in his studio and deleted the photos we didn't like. Me, of course, finding everything wrong with each shot. He then whipped out a piece of cardboard with a FEDEX logo on it and said,

"YOU see the arrow, everyone else will see the FEDEX!"

Moral of the story was, I was being too picky. Do you see it??


I reminded myself of the FEDEX logo and decided I needed a break. I headed over to Vimeo.com to see if there were any new videos that I could relax with.

I watched BOY SOLDER and realized how much of an ASS I was being tonight.

SOMETIMES WE NEED A REALITY CHECK - I got mine.