 Especially when you're a beginner photographer, it's easy to get overwhelmed and feel frustrated with your creative endeavors. Truth is, from time to time every photographer does, and it's knowing how to deal with it, you know, that's the trick. Creative endeavors are tricky, you know, they're a hard thing to do. The very nature of creativity means almost the harder that we try to reach for it, the more it slips through our fingers. How's it, how's it? If you're new to the channel, my name is Alex and this is where I get to share my experiences as a professional photographer to help people like yourself on their journey through photography. And as a journey, I certainly hope you're going to stick with after you've finished watching this video. Photography is a beautiful and wonderful and fulfilling medium. And of course I would say this given that I'm a photographer. I think it is the one that gives most people the ability to be expressive. You know, painting requires a hand-eye coordination that I certainly don't have as there's drawing. I'm not very good at writing and stuff. So photography is this perfect medium. It's also one of those mediums where it's so easy to get started. There are many books out there, you know, many videos. YouTube is littered with them about, you know, how to set exposures and how to use lenses and things of that nature. But there are so few videos, both within photography and any other sort of art field that address what happens when you hit a brick wall, when your creativity just goes boom and it smacks into reality. And it leaves you questioning whether or not this is actually working out. Have you reached the end of a road in your photography? And I think that for the majority of you watching that you haven't, all you've done is you've hit a speed bump and we just need to reset and see the bigger picture. I believe perspective is important to keep within our photography, certainly knowing where we are on our own personal journeys. When we started off in photography, there were lots of little quick easy wins that we got, much like when we started playing a video game. You know, you learn about exposures and f-stops and how different lenses do different things and why have you. And you get through all this sort of stuff and you get to a point where why isn't my photography improving at the same rate as it did a month ago, a year ago, what have you. And we think, well, hang on, something's wrong, but it's not, this is natural, right? That you now have a more advanced set of skills. You know, whether you've been doing this for a year or whether you've been taking photographs for 50 years, you're at a different level. And the next level up, if you want to call it that, is at a different place than it is or it was a few months ago or 10 years ago. Things have moved on. So keep perspective, especially when you're new. You will get better. You will learn to read light in a more intuitive way. You will learn to see a scene. You will learn to do layering the same way that Alex Webb does, you know, with almost without thinking about it. It will come. What does success look like to you? My idea of success is probably very different to yours, certainly in regards to photography. And if you were to be successful, does that mean you can then just stop taking photographs? Of course, it's not. No, it's not. That's a ridiculous concept. You're not going to just stop taking photographs because now you've won photography. It doesn't work like that. This is a creative expression. And sometimes it's difficult. Sometimes it just flows. It just comes and it goes and it's beautiful. I've always felt the creativity is very delicate and it's only inspiration is an extremely delicate, fine thing. And if we try and grab it too hard, it just slips through our fingers. And this is what I believe is happening when we hit that roadblock is that we try to grasp too hard for it. We try to find and reach out for this elusive thing that we believe is just right in front of us. And the more that we reach for it, the more it's just slightly further away, always a little bit further away. And we can't really get hold of it. I think the greatest danger, especially with those projects of the 365 projects and what have you, is that they are forcing you to connect with something. Take a picture every single day and you'll become better because you're doing it every single day. But that becomes a chore and it becomes something you don't necessarily want to do. You start to resent the thing that you are doing. It's like when I've been learning about developing a YouTube channel, a lot of the information, a lot of the suggestions are, make a video every single day. It doesn't matter how bad it is, just do a video. Make the content. Just do, do, do, do, do. Because you will get better from doing it. And you know what happens when you do that? You just churn out junk because you are being forced by yourself just to churn out junk for the sake of turning out junk. And then you become resentful of doing that and it makes you disengaged with the process. And it destroys the joy and the excitement that you feel for that creative process. And I don't want you to feel that within your photography. I want you to know it's okay. If you don't want to take pictures for a few days, put your camera down. It's all right. Look at some other photography. Look at photography that you haven't seen before. Try, you know, exploring a new genre of photography. If you're, you know, if you're not really into anything but landscapes. Look at still lives. Look at abstract. Look at art photography. But if you are struggling with it, just, yeah, it's okay to put down the camera. It's okay to not take photographs for a few weeks or, you know, however long. It's all right. You don't need to be doing it all the time. You can jump off the treadmill and you can get back on when you are recharged. It's not a failure to say, I don't enjoy or to hold up our hands and say, this is not working for me. I don't really get this. It's, it's feeling like it's, it's a, it's a grind and a chore. All photographers and I imagine all artists struggle with this from time to time. I certainly do. There are days where, despite the fact that I am better now than I was certainly 30 years ago, turning the creativity on a dime, it just sometimes doesn't gel with me. And it does feel like a complete battle. And I've had to, over the course of my career, find ways of dealing with that. I'm not talking about doing photo projects or, you know, these sort of things that so often crop up as a way to reinvigorate your photography. I mentioned that, you know, I have a studio. So for the last 10 years, I have been running a family portrait studio, which is just myself. So it's just me in the studio. And this is the latest iteration of my career as a photographer. And, and it was a change from doing weddings, which I've been doing previously and before that I was doing some PR stuff. And so you see throughout my career, I've sort of, I've pivoted a few times into, to things that I want to try. And this is, I think the heart of everything that you want to remember is that you're not required to do something. You are not required to be a landscape photographer. You're not required to be a horse photographer or some such. Nobody's forcing you to do anything. I've always been a big believer in the fact that the technical aspects of photography, exposures and things like that, they're relatively simple things to pick up. But the great thing that, that helps you with your own creativity can help you overcome these roadblocks is, is learning to see visually. And I put together a load of videos that will help you on this journey of exploring your own ability to see photography and express yourself visually, which I'll link for you at the end of the video. It's no surprise on YouTube that there are camera and equipment reviews coming out of the yin and yang. They're just everywhere, right? And I get it is because there's a lot of people when they are hitting that roadblock, hitting this wall and thinking, I'm just not creative, that a new lens, something new, a new shiny bit of toy is going to reinvigorate their photography. This is what's actually holding them back is that they don't have a fisheye lens or they don't have a super telephoto. Having that new piece of glass or this new camera will reinvigorate their creativity and it doesn't. All it does is just as empty as your bank account. That money that you wanted to spend or you put into a new lens or something could be invested into other things that would help your creativity far better. Watching films, watching films that you like. There have to be photography films. Just anything that that excites your vision. Reading books again doesn't have to be photography books. There can be art books or going to museums. Just something that just sparks your inner voice, the inner visual sponge or whatever you want to call it in there. Buying a lens, buying gear isn't going to help you at all. Certainly not creatively. Certainly as a new photographer, don't fall into this trap of thinking that a piece of kit is what's missing from your repertoire. It's not. Some of the best photographers in the world just use one or two lenses. You don't need tons of fancy gear to be creative. The camera that you have right now is better, however you want to define that, than any camera that any of the greats of photography that have gone before us had. Work with what you have and that will make you far more creative. But don't think that buying a lens or a new body is the way to get over or somehow is holding you back because it isn't. All of us have had negative comments directed at our photography. I've had, I'm going to hold up my hand, I've had a lot of negative comments directed at me because of my photography, especially when I was younger. And when you're younger, when you're new to something, these can affect you quite deeply. And if I think about it, if I close my eyes and I think about it, I can still remember quite clearly hearing some extremely negative comments about my photography when I was in my early 20s. And these are from people who'd paid me money to take some photos. And they stuck with me for a long time. And for a long time they held me back. And I know it's not easy to just to brush off the negative comments and to forget about them. But don't let them be the cause of you quitting photography. Don't let them be the reason that you give up on something that you enjoy doing. If somebody doesn't like your photography and I've said this before, tough, right? It's not for them, it's for you. If somebody gives you honest criticism, then good, okay? Then that's take it on board and see what positives you can draw from it. But if somebody just gives you an I don't like this or the downvote or read it or wherever you want to show your photographs or they give you short shrift, it doesn't matter. Just forget about them. Don't let them dictate how you feel about your photography. It's not their photography, it's yours. I get very angry when people say stupid comments about photography and they force people to stop doing something that they love doing because somehow it doesn't chime with that negative person's worldview. I don't care, right? If there are 99 people out of 100 who give you bad feedback who say this sucks, so what? Doing it for yourself, going back all the way to those vanity metrics and stuff, nobody, it doesn't matter, right? You do whatever is good for you and you'll get over those speed bumps, trust me, right? You will become better. You will get to where you want to go, the next step in your journey. What would happen if we let everybody who told us something negative to be the cause of us giving up on something? Of course, neatly coupled with that is the fact that there are no gatekeepers in photography like every other creative endeavour. You are, and you should be, your own boss. You are free to do your own thing. Now I can hear some people probably going, you can't just tell them that exposures and things like that don't matter. Of course, those are all tools. What you do with them is up to you just because everybody in your camera club likes to do landscapes. Don't feel that you have to do landscapes or if everybody is so into street photography. I really, I'm not fussed about street photography. So if I were to go along with a bunch of people on a street photography jaunt, if you want to call it that, I would probably just photograph the things that interest me, which are actually ceilings and architectural features. Don't let people dictate to you what you should be doing. This is a creative journey that you're on. Be creative. Do your own thing. So much of the frustration of being a creator in a visual sense is that we don't often know the language that we can use to express ourselves. I put up on the screen right here a playlist for you that will help you develop your own visual narrative to learn these words so you can express yourself more freely in your photography. Thanks ever so much for joining me here today. It's been a pleasure to be here with you.