 Today's episode of The Photographic, I is very proudly brought to you by Pick Drop. How's it, how's it? The other day I was asking the community, you know, what's the biggest struggle with photography and overthinking came back as the overwhelming answer. So what exactly is overthinking in photography? It's, as far as I'm concerned, and it's happened to me a couple of times. Is that moment, you know, you know there's a photograph there somewhere, but all of a sudden what seemed so easy, so natural earlier on, just devolves into this kind of mess in your head. Like, oh, so many questions, just second guessing, should I do this, should I do that? No, that's not right. And you're doing all this kind of mental gymnastics before you even press the shutter. A lot of people might say, yeah, okay, well, Alex, just, you know, just press the shutter, take the picture and stop fussing. You're just, just press the button. But that would be kind of bad advice because it takes you in completely the opposite direction. So this came to a head with me a couple of years ago when I was down in Cardiff for a workshop that I'd been, what, like four years going to, on and off, we'd go down to Cardiff about four times a year. And I got to know all the people in the workshop and I was quite friendly with the guy who was running the workshop. And in this particular morning, we were down at, I think it was the Cardiff City Hall on these big steps. It's the sort of place I absolutely love taking photographs. And as is often the way with workshops, there was a gaggle of photographers, about 20 people training their lens on the one poor model. He's just standing there and I thought, okay, I'm going to try something different today. Rather than staying with the pack, I'm going to go and off to the site. I'm going to shoot down the side of the columns. Occasionally I'm going to ask the model just to look my way, but apart from that, I'm going to do my own thing. I'm not going to be around other people. I'm not going to seek advice. I'm not going to sort of try and play to the crowd or anything like that. I'm just going to do my own thing. And it was cool. I loved the light. I loved the pictures that I got there. It just, everything was just in that zone. You know, when everything is just kind of poor, it's working like a charm. That all changed though, when we got down to the beach. We split up into smaller groups. And this time I was with a couple of photographers. They're friends of mine. And we're photographing the same model, but it's a big monolith thing. It was actually, it was a pretty cool scene. I mean, you could look at the pictures, they look fantastic. The sun had come out, so the light was a bit tricky to use. I thought, well, okay, we'll solve that by putting the girl in the open shade and photographing with the sun in front of us. And again, that was a cool solution. Then Mark turns up, these guys leading the workshop. And at this point, something just sort of switched in my head like that little beep, right? It just, like, it just went, it went from one thing to the other. All that creativity just stopped dead in its tracks. Because I was trying to impress someone. I started to overthink. I was in the moment going, what can I do? What can I do to make this photograph so impressive that he's gonna look at it and go, wow, that's amazing, Alex. So consequently, everything in my head about how to take a picture that had been so easy up until this point just slipped away and was replaced with all this stuff. What does Mark like? Oh, hang on. All these ideas about composition and things that I'd learned over decades were bubbling to the surface and getting in the way of me actually taking the photograph. I don't know, maybe you can see this playing out in your mind's eye. But you look in your own ways, whatever reason, things just get in the way of pressing the button. And eventually Mark turns around and goes, Alex, for God's sake, just press the shutter. I just want to take a quick moment to let you know about the TPE community newsletter that goes out every Saturday. Just talking about photography, sharing some thoughts, asking some questions that help you go a little bit deeper into why you take photographs. Where does the pleasure come from in you taking images? And hopefully inspire you to get your cameras and go out there and shoot. If you'd like to get your own copy of Saturday selections, then click on the link in the comment section below. So of course, I did what he said, and I pressed the shutter. I fell into that trap that I see so many times with people who I'm helping out with photography services. Ironically, I was doing the same thing is just picture, picture, picture, picture, picture. And they're all the same thing. I'm expecting something to change just because I'm taking loads of frames. Do you recognize that feeling? Yeah, you'll be real for seeing. I've taken 100 pictures on the off-chance, but one of them was kind of a little thing, a little spark. What I should have done instead was take that advice. Yes, just shoot, but apply it in a different way. To these days, if I'm faced with a bit of kind of like overwhelm, I'm just trying to think too much, what I do is this. I sit and I go, okay, fine. I'm just gonna take a photograph. Take a photograph and then I change something. Could be squatting down and take another picture. Don't think about it too much, just shoot, boom. Change something else, maybe my position. Take a picture, bang, turn around, look behind me, photograph something over there, bang. Do that five times. And each time, I'm not looking at the picture, I'm not thinking about what it is. I'm just going, cool, you've taken a picture and it's well done. Gonna take a break, five minutes. Come back and do the same process again. Picture, change, picture, change, picture, change. Don't overthink it, don't look at them, don't analyze the photograph and think what's wrong and how you can improve and stuff like that. The purpose of this is just to give yourself a dopamine hit, right, celebrating a small win. I've just taken a photograph. This is so cool. Awesome, I didn't think about it. It seems a bit hippie-dippy kind of stuff, right? A bit like, ooh, sort of, you know, pros. But that process of really celebrating this small win of just taking a picture helps you unclog all that overthinking, all the stuff that's surfaced up there, that's getting the way of you just taking a photograph, of being creative. That's what was happening. Mark turned up and all of a sudden I was trying to impress somebody. That's my ego talking and maybe something different for you. And because of that, logs got in the way and that flow in the river. Earlier on in the day, I was just doing things for myself. I wasn't worrying about whether or not they were gonna be impressive for somebody else. So the flow was nice and easy. I was just reacting for what I care about. To try that the next time you're out, take a moment, you're bang, bang, bang. Take some pictures, but change it up. And once you've got that creative juices flowing again, that's when you can look at the photographs and decide, oh, okay, cool, I can change this or I can change that. But if you need to get over this overthinking process, just remember, shoot, change, shoot, change, pat on the back and move on. In this video, I mentioned about your photographing just for myself, but you're doing things that kind of made it feel natural, relaxing. If you wanna find out how to tap into your own why you actually take photographs and channel some of that, that enjoyment, then click on this link over here. I'm sure you'll enjoy this video and I look forward to seeing you again soon. Thanks for being here, bye.