Sit tight! Because you’re about to be overwhelmed with black and white photography. You might be asking yourself why and the answer could be very simple but it’s a rather long and a more personal story. If you don’t mind I would like to approach the first part of our Gatebil coverage in a more photographical way. An in depth view on the event itself will follow soon of course. But for now step into a B/W rollercoaster!
As a photographer I’m always pressuring myself, thinking that it’s not good enough, believing it could be better and trust me when I say it, it messes with you when you do that for a while. About 6 weeks before we left for Gatebil in Sweden, my mindset was at the lowest point possible when it comes to photography and it felt that I needed to take a few steps back.
A situation like that is actually the most ridiculous thing for a photographer to be in when you have only been holding your camera in your hands for four lousy years. In my opinion you should be at a point where your progress is noticeable almost every month if not every week.
The fact is I have been progressing more than I know myself. Or let’s say more than I noticed at certain moments. Lately I’ve been assessing my work and compared it to stuff I shot one month ago and one year ago. Little did I know how big the difference was. I’ve aspecially been comparing the RAW files and found out my photography has changed pretty substantially.
I’m happy to know for myself now that I’ve been getting my shadows and highlights much more to the point of satisfaction compared to what I used to. Usually I would light up the highlights in photoshop and would darken my shadows. That hasn’t changed but the fact that it’s actually much less adjustment as before, satisfies me. You create a picture with your camera and not with photoshop.
Still this is not good enough, and the fact that I say that does not mean it’s shitty work but it means next time, I will do better. That’s the only point I needed to realise for quite a while. Striving to be better! Having captured much less as I would one year ago helped as well.
When I first started visiting car events, it was common to fill several memory cards . I think I can count on one hand when my memory card was full this year. I try to look longer and frame my shots before I pull the trigger, the analogue approach. When I went to England with Co-OrdSport earlier this year I only shot around 600 images in four days time.
For me the workflow to shoot a lot less but look longer before I capture something, came some sort of natural. Unintentionally there is a lot less shots to reject compared to when you shoot 4k images in a weekend. And I genuinly believe that when you reject less of your work, you’ll be more motivated the next time you go out and you’ll shoot better than before.
So where is this all leading me? Honestly I have no idea yet. I just came to a realisation, had some sort of epiphany and decided to change my game a little bit. I hope I’m also ready to take some bigger steps in photography and keep on pushing forward. I’ve decided to try and keep my work for Wangan Warriors at one article each month. This will result in the fact that I will be sharing much less work but it will definitely be better work each time.
I’ll invalidate those plans right away by saying there will be following an in depth view of Gatebil in Sweden very soon after this of course but after that there will be a change. I just felt that I needed to write this down to clear the thoughts that have been on my mind. If you made it to the bottom of this page it means you’ve showed interest in my personal story, which I appreciate very much. It’s time for my new method: Plan, execute, process, repeat.
-Rens