Madeira 1: Internal Struggles
There are several ways I could have written this blog. Like some of my other posts, I could have written about what I thought about my photography and the trip and come to the conclusion of “I love this place and I can’t wait to be back”. Or seeing that most people around me couldn’t tell you where/what Madeira was (let alone have visited), I thought about writing a guide to some of the more iconic locations on the beautiful island. There is a time for those things in the future, but I don’t think either is an accurate reflection of where I am with my photography right now.
When I decided that I wanted to start writing a blog about my photography, my goal was for the blog was to be an accurate reflection of what I was doing and how I was feeling about my own work and about photography more generally, as well as all the associated things like travel. Very quickly though, I feel like I was just writing these blogs after coming back from a big trip to show off my new set of photos, or in anticipation of an upcoming trip. It’s very much felt like I was putting up a front, like this website was just a fancy upgrade to an Instagram feed.
I’ve been in Europe for almost three months now, and many people have begun to ask where the photos are, or why I’ve not published anything thus far. I think the truth is that in the last couple of months, I’ve been struggling a lot with my photography. I’ve found myself more frustrated and stressed out with my photography than in the past, and truthfully more than I should be feeling. While photography is supposed to be a hobby and therefore a source of relaxation and enjoyment, I’m just not sure how much joy I am getting out of it at this very moment. To try and unpack what I’m feeling and why I’m feeling this way, I think it can be broken down into internal and external elements.
Internally, I think that I’ve been placing even more pressure than normal on myself, and that I’m now really starting to feel the consequences of this. I can attribute this pressure to a few things:
Increased recognition: In 2022, I’ll admit that my photography got a lot of recognition - perhaps more than ever before. I got my work exhibited at Objectifs through the 2021 Shooting Home Youth Awards, and towards the end of the year I had a rather successful print sale. With this increased recognition though, I think I started to put more pressure on myself. Because I know that there are more eyes on me and on my work than before, I do sometimes feel like every time I go out to shoot that I need to be producing a portfolio level image, if not something “world class”, and often become thoroughly disappointed when I don’t return home with anything special.
Being in Europe: Being on exchange in Europe means that not only do I have easy access to a wide range of stunning locations than before, I also have the time (due to a relatively light academic workload) to go and shoot. With upcoming pressures of internships, my dissertation and the job search coming up, I don’t know how much time I am going to have to travel, or for photography in general. As a result, I’m definitely feeling the need to maximise my time here, and to come back to Singapore with a hard-drive full of award winning images to sustain myself for a while.
Recent successes: While related to the first point, I thought that the photographs from my 2022 travels were really strong, and that my photography went up a level during my Indonesia trip in particular. I don’t think that any of my more recent work since has matched the standards I set for myself during that trip, and I’ve been left feeling frustrated at almost every image I’ve produced since.
While I’ve always been a fairly results-oriented person, I’ve noticed that I’m emphasising the final product/photo even more than before, and I think that has led to me enjoying travelling and some of the incredible experiences I’ve had less than I should be. In the last few months, I’ve been to multiple UNESCO world heritage sites, massive sea cliffs, centuries-old laurel forests and on top of the most scenic mountains in Europe, but sometimes all I can think about is “dammit I didn’t get the shot” or “why are the conditions so bad”.
I really like this mini photo series, and I do think they tell the story of this particular part of Madeira very well.
Do I think they are the best images? Definitely not. But I think they’re definitely good enough to be seen by the world.
In the past, the perfectionist in me would have never published any of the shots on this blog, and would have only released the 10 or so “best” images from the trip.
This leads me on to some of the more external elements. Back in my army days, my friends and I used to joke about this thing called “Luke luck”, which would be that the weather would always be incredible while I was in camp, but miserable on the days that I was out of camp/had gone out to shoot. My time in Europe thus far has really made me reconsider whether I think this was really a joke. Let me use an example from my time in Madeira to explain. One of the main locations I wanted to photograph was this forest called the Fanal Forest, which is this incredible ancient forest filled with laurel trees. As cool as the trees are, the scene really comes alive when the (frequent) mist comes rolling in, creating a mystical and ethereal look to the scene. Having seen some incredible work by other photographers, I was desperate to see what I could produce in this location. It was about an hour drive away from my hostel, and supposedly the best chance of seeing the mist was early in the morning. So four out of the seven mornings of my trip, I dragged myself out of bed at 5.30am and drove over, hoping that I would just get one day with the conditions I wanted. Even as close as 2km away, the roads were full of mist, giving me so much hope, but as I approached the forest itself, the mist would always clear up and I’d be left with just clear sky and a disheartened spirit. The worst part is that the day I left Madeira, some people from my hostel went, and they said they got the exact conditions I was looking for. Of course they did.
The Fanal Forests are known for their frequent misty conditions, and you can see from this shot that there was mist in the distant background, but in my four attempts it never entered the valley as it normally does.
As anyone who has lived with me knows, I watch a lot of photography youtube content (often at 2x speed), where I see photographers show up to these incredible locations and get epic conditions almost immediately. Even when they don’t, the next morning when they wake up they’ll get a perfect sunrise, and the video will be titled “Why You Shouldn’t Give Up In Landscape Photography” or something like that. I don’t necessarily think that they are better photographers than I am, but when you consistently get such shoddy conditions and you see the kind of conditions that others get, it can get pretty demoralising pretty quickly. I pride myself immensely on my ability to “put in the hard yards”, or in this case wake up early. But as is the case with anything in life, it’s incredibly difficult to keep working hard when you’re seeing little to no results.
In these last couple of months, as part of my wider struggle with photography, I’ve thought a lot about why I take photos. I realised that I don’t really take photos anymore for documentation (my camera roll is almost empty and I have virtually no photos of me in Europe), and that ultimately photography has become a means of expression more than anything else. And it is still a mode of expression that I love, perhaps more than anything. So I want to reassure anyone reading this that I’m not retiring from photography, but I do think that everything above is making reconsider my relationship with it. I wish I had more answers at this point in time, but I really don’t. I think I need to put a lot more thought into what is it about this whole process which brings me joy, and how I can get back to loving and enjoying photography like I have for so long now.
The photos from this blog are all from an album of Madeira photos I labelled “The Almosts” - shots that I do like, but I don’t think are my strongest work. As part of an effort to deliberately be less results oriented with my photography, I think that I need to accept that just because something isn’t your BEST work ever, that it still has value.
For any of you still reading, thank you for sticking around and listening to me rant. Perhaps I might not choose to publish this at all (if you are reading this, then clearly I changed my mind). But I do think that it is important for me to put these thoughts down, at least for myself. I recognise that there are highs and lows for everything, and that it is okay to sometimes just take a break or walk away for a while. But I do know (or at least hope) that things do get better. We all try to project our best selves out to the rest of the world, but I think the key takeaway from all this thus far is that we aren’t always going to be at 100% all the time. And that’s okay.
[PS. I will release the main set of photos from Madeira in a future blog post. They are coming, I promise. Just not today].
Edit on 2nd Apr: I wanted to leave this blog on a slightly more positive note, and to provide a bit of an update. I wrote this piece one night where I was feeling particularly discouraged and upset about my own work and about photography more generally. It’s been a few days, and having gone back to read this piece a few times since, I think I want to emphasise that I recognise a lot of the thoughts, especially about the weather, are fairly defeatist, and it’s something that I am actively trying to work on. I think the funny thing is the day after publishing this piece, I was having a conversation with a friend who was feeling fairly disheartened about his own work, and so I provided him with some advice that I thought might help. As I was speaking, I very quickly realised the irony of the situation, and that the very things I was telling him were things I should be embodying myself.
So what were these takeaways/pieces of advice? First is not to be so hard on myself - photography should always ultimately be fun, and whenever I am stressed out about the conditions or my photos, this is something I should remember. Second is that I should avoid comparing myself to others, but try and learn from them. The reality is that the people I am trying to “compete” with are either professional photographers with the time and budget to travel, or they live in the area they are photographing, both providing an exponential advantage. Considering the fact that I don’t have the ability to continuously revisit places, I am really proud of the work I have produced thus far. I’m really coming to grips with the idea that “comparison is the thief of joy”, and so rather than trying to compete or compare myself with other photographers, I should focus more on what I can learn from them. And the last thing, which I think is the most important, is to just keep staying consistent, and just focus on the things I can control. While I can’t guarantee amazing weather conditions, I can control my own mindset and attitude, and I know that in the long run it will yield results.
