their moment

 
Here is something I’ve figured out the hard way: If I go into a session *needing* to do well in order that I might somehow feel important or better about myself, I will fail every time. Oh, I may come up with images to satisfy the basic needs of the client, but something will be missing and I’ll know it. Being motivated primarily by ego desires, even those as noble sounding as, “I want to do the very best work for this client”, put me in a performance mindset. And if I’m performing I can’t be fully engaged with my subjects as we’ll remain in two different places with a stage curtain between us. I have to jump right in there with them and allow our beings to coalesce for anything worthwhile to emerge.

Still, I struggle with this, in particular when dealing with family shoots. There is a strong tendency to keep myself apart, to see “them “ over there and “me” over here. I recognized this happening the other day when photographing this family, although it took me a while to switch out of performance mode. Oftentimes it takes things not going well to finally trigger me into realizing that I have to participate fully in the messiness of human interactions for there to be any chance to extract the underlying beauty that is always present if you look close enough.

When I make the transition from performer to participant I stop worrying about the final images. I no longer need to impress anyone with my credentials. And I don’t require anything specific to happen to feel better about myself. Their moment becomes our moment………I’m infused in it.

~Cynthia