They say that change is good and that one needs to be always reinventing oneself. I think as in most things one must devote themselves if they wish to improve and move beyond the average and truly excel at something. My mentor Scott Robert recently put up a quote from another one of our friends who is an amazing photographer in his own right. The quote was, “Hard work always beats lazy talent- Tauran Woo” In my life I have seen people who have had great natural talent but it sometimes ends up being a curse, because they find early success easily so end up never pushing forward or wanting to put in the work to become great. I actually find it sad that they waste such valuable gifts.
I feel I have been blessed in my life in that I have had some amount of natural talent in a number of things. But in my case I always must work and push to achieve higher levels. In the area of photography I have always had some amount of artistic creativity but I have been lucky to get some great instruction and have some pretty awesome mentors. But I think what really helps me is that I am always trying to think of new ways to capture an image or achieve what I have in my mind. I do believe that is what we all need so we can continue to grow and hopefully one day achieve true greatness. It baffles me when I run into other photographers who just become satisfied with what they are doing and limit themselves to that which they know. To me I wonder what they think when they look at the results of each shoot and see the exact same thing each time. I am not saying that you would reinvent the world each day but I think one would want to always keep moving and growing.
So the other weekend to keep pushing myself I did a little bit of the retro thing while shooting an Engagement Session. I lay down my trusty 5D MkII and picked up an ole Hasselblad to shoot a few shots. I was curious to see what kind of look I could get with it but more importantly it made me slow down a bit and pushed me out of my box. Stepping out of the box I think helps you to make that box just that much bigger. I know it is scary sometimes and I will admit that I like consistency but without those adventures out of your comfort zone you will never truly achieve all that you could. Here are a few shots that came out of the Hassey. Thanks to Sandra & Tomas for putting up with my little experiment.
