Are You Enjoying Your Photography? If Not, Why Not?

I happened upon this scene on a backroad in northern California a few years ago.  Stumbling
upon subjects like this is one of the reasons I find photography pleasurable. (click to enlarge)

In my experience, as much as I live and breathe photography, there have been times when it has completely stressed me out.  More times than I can count.  I put so much pressure on myself to always come back with my best images, that I ended up not enjoying the experience.  No pleasure.  Maybe even thinking I failed.  I have taken my photography so seriously that I lost any pleasure and it felt like a job where I had to perform.   I don’t think I’m the only one of us to have experienced that.  How about you?

For most of us, photography is a hobby.  To me, a hobby’s first obligation is to give us pleasure.  Everything else is secondary.  If you’re not getting pleasure from your photography, I think you must be something wrong.  The enjoyment you derive from your photography should not be sacrificed by worrying over gear, wondering if you are or are not good enough or, as happened to me, always trying to get a ‘banger’* and being disappointed when you didn’t.

Research on leisure activities consistently points toward the importance of intrinsic motivation—doing something because the activity itself is satisfying. Yet, at times, I didn’t get any satisfaction.  Well, not anymore.  All that has changed for me and my photography.

We enjoy talking about gear—cameras, lenses, sensors, autofocus, megapixels, dynamic range, composition, editing, printing and all the other things surrounding photography.  None of those things is inherently bad.  In fact, talking about some of them can be really interesting.  Anticipating new gear can be exciting.

But with everything we can talk about related to photography, it is remarkably easy to forget the simplest reason to have a camera in the first place.  Photography is fun.  Making photographs makes us happy.  Being creative is satisfying.  It fulfills a need in many of us.

We don’t need a better camera to enjoy photography.  We don’t need a better lens.  We don’t need a better destination.  We don’t need better light.  We don’t even need to make a good photograph to enjoy our photography.  We just need to enjoy looking.  I was out Sunday afternoon to a place I’ve been at least 25 times.  You expect it to be a boring outing.  But I kept my eyes open, found some subjects to photograph and had a good old time!

Take the camera.  Walk out the door.  Find something that interests you.  Photograph it.  If you enjoy doing that, you’ve already succeeded.

It is not hard to accidentally turn a hobby into what feels like a job.  A professional photographer has legitimate reasons to worry about equipment, technical performance, consistency, efficiency and results.  They have to bring back excellent images every time.  We don’t.

As an amateur, the moment we start believing that every outing has to produce photographs worthy of publication, every trip needs to be to the most photographic places, every lens needs to be the “best” lens and every photograph needs to be technically excellent, we have introduced the expectations of a job into something that was supposed to be recreation.  Don’t let that happen.

But…and there is a big but…some personality types, like those who are perfectionists or those with OCD-like tendencies, may not be able to “let go” and just enjoy the craft.  I was kind of like that for years and years, but not to the highest degree.  As I said, no more.  I’ve given up putting pressure on myself to have only the best gear and always come home with the best images.

These days, I just grab my kit and go out to see what I can find that is interesting.  Things that make me stop when I notice them.  I can photograph an old gas station, a faded motel sign, a strange color combination, an old building, a country road, a piece of machinery, a reflection, something somebody painted on a wall or something that may disappear next year.  All can make interesting images.

You don’t have to produce anything.  You don’t have to sell anything.  You don’t have to impress anyone.  You don’t even have to make a particularly good photograph.  You can simply walk around with a camera because you like walking around with a camera.

Your photographs don’t have to be important to anybody else.  If it was interesting to you, that’s enough.  The camera becomes an excuse to be curious and to take notice of everything around us.

We have somehow convinced ourselves that a good photograph needs to be of something important or visually compelling—a famous landmark, a spectacular sunset, an historic location, a dramatic landscape, a majestic mountain or an exotic destination—but it doesn’t.  Photography can be an investigation of what is around us rather than a hunt for a masterpiece.

What we don’t want to happen, but often does, is turn pleasure into another performance metric.  Photography doesn’t have to be productive.  It doesn’t have to make you money.  It doesn’t have to improve your portfolio.  It doesn’t have to increase your Instagram following.  It doesn’t have to win a competition.  It doesn’t even have to improve you as a photographer.

You are allowed to photograph something simply because you enjoyed photographing it.  There is nothing frivolous about saying, “I photograph because I enjoy it.”  Simple as that.  And enjoyment is not a lesser reason.  It is the reason.

Suppose you go out for hours and come home with nothing particularly good.  Was the outing a failure?  Only if the purpose of the outing was to produce good photographs.  If you went out for the enjoyment of the experience, it was anything but a failure.

If you enjoyed being outside, noticed things you wouldn’t otherwise have noticed, experimented, discovered a new place, saw something that made you smile or simply enjoyed carrying a camera, then the outing succeeded.  The photograph is the souvenir.  The experience was the actual event.  The pleasure you had was the payoff.

There is also a tendency to believe that we need to travel somewhere extraordinary to make extraordinary photographs.  But perhaps the real skill is being able to find something interesting where you already are.

A photographer who needs Yosemite, Monument Valley or Paris to become interested has fewer opportunities than the photographer who can find something interesting at the end of his or her driveway.  The latter photographer can photograph every day and that is a much more sustainable kind of photography.

I think, at the end of the day, you should give yourself several “permissions” so you can reduce the stress, loosen up and really enjoy your photography.

Give yourself:

Permission to use the camera you already own.

Permission to buy gear because you simply enjoy it—but without pretending that you need it.

Permission to not worry about sharpness, distortion, aberrations or autofocus speed.

Permission to photograph ordinary things.

Permission to photograph badly.

Permission to go out without a destination.

Permission to come home without a keeper.

Permission to photograph the same thing multiple times.

Permission to take 100 photographs of something nobody else finds interesting.

Permission to not care about megapixels.

Permission to not worry about sharpness in the corners.

Permission to not care what anybody else thinks.

And perhaps most importantly, permission to have fun.

Don’t stop enjoying cameras.  Don’t stop enjoying lenses.  Don’t stop enjoying talking about photography.  Don’t stop traveling to photograph.  It’s all good.

Grab your camera and go have some fun.  Don’t worry about anything except enjoying yourself.  That’s what I do now.  Photography should add pleasure to life, not turn pleasure into another thing we feel obligated to optimize.

*A “Banger” in modern digital photography and social media culture is widely referred to a flawlessly executed, high-impact photo. Photographers frequently use phrases like “capturing a banger” or “getting bangers.” (Google AI)

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!

Dennis A. Mook

Join me over at my website, www.dennismook.com .

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