Be Unique

Posted by Matt Lange on Jul 1, 2009 in Information, Tuesday Inspiration | 0 comments

Something happened to me the other day.  I have been feeling like I am in this huge creative rut, and there is no escape.  I could not, for the life of me, figure out why.  I have all the tools at my disposal I need, yet I can’t feel like I’m doing anything creative.  I set up to shoot, I don’t feel inspired, then when I look at the images I took I slap myself because they are really good.  But I feel like if I just gave a LITTLE bit more, they would be amazing.  So why was this?  Then it hit me…

…I was trying far too hard to be like other photographers, listen too hard to what they were saying, trying to hard to emulate…..I lost my natural feeling for it.  The thing that makes me do what I know how to do, well.  You may think, ‘oh man, this person’s stuff is awesome…I’ll just make mine like that’. Wrong.  That is so hard to do. You spend 90% of the time trying to figure out how they did something, which kinds of lights, where they shot, etc.  This is too much, and VERY much takes away from you just being creative and doing what you love.

So I want this to be a short post. I just want to tell other photographers out there…’Be yourself’.  I am not saying that from a standpoint of, ‘don’t copy my work.  If you do, I’ll hate you’.  No, that’s not it at all. Do it for yourself. Shoot what you feel is great and the way you want, and trust me, it will be so much easier.  You’ll be rewarded far more than you know for this.

Have a good one,

Matt