Welcome to issue 26 of superchARJ! That means I’ve been writing to you for 6 months, every single week. If you’ve been with me since issue 1 thanks very much, but whatever issue you joined me I’m glad to have you here reading my hopefully-helpful-ramblings!

Someone described me as “oddly motivational” the other day. I’m happy with that title!

I was having some conversations this week about being a bit down on my own work at the moment. Not creative enough, too safe, too boring… trying to get to the bottom of why that might be.

Turns out many people I spoke to were feeling very similar. Maybe you are too?

Well good news, I have a theory and a possible solution.

Culling is the most boring job on the planet. It’s no way to appreciate your work. You’re seeing every mistake, every nearly, every not quite.

Editing to achieve a deliverable gallery improves your view of your work over culling, but let’s face it – full galleries are boring from a purely creative perspective.

I don’t do standard slideshows, so since the beginning of the year I’ve not made any small selections of any wedding.

So my view of my own work this year so far is only of full galleries. I’m proud of them all from a consistency perspective – quality control is high – but it’s just not the best way to assess yourself creatively.

That’s the result of this week’s deep and meaningfuls with my photography friends anyway.

In past years, as part of my workflow, I’ve always been really good at making a blog post selection once I’ve finished an edit, before I move onto the next wedding.

When I’ve been really organised, I’ve even written and scheduled the blog posts themselves.

That hasn’t happened this year. I want to say because I’m too busy, but I’ve definitely had time… I just haven’t made it a priority, and it’s fallen out of my workflow.

That needs to change, if my appreciation of my own work is to improve… which it needs to.

I just selected blog images from my first three weddings of this year back in March and April. Instantly, I feel 100 times better about these three weddings.

I can suddenly see the creativity in amongst the consistency. I can see I created a subset of work within those galleries that was unmistakably my work in my style.

That feels good.

From now on I’ll be placing a much higher priority on making these blog selections a part of my workflow.

If you make slideshows you might already be doing this to an extent, but usually with slideshows in my experience you’re making them with the clients in mind, so images will make the cut for the slideshow which wouldn’t necessarily make the cut for a more selfish blog post selection. Kind of a half-way-house between the full gallery and a blog post (or instagram reel / tiktok) selection.

I’ll leave it for a future issue to talk about why I think blog posts/reels/tiktoks should be selected as selfishly as possible.

So the moral of the story this week is that if all you’re seeing is your pre-culled work and then full galleries, it will become very hard to distinguish your own work from everything else you’re seeing on instagram or wherever.

You’ll also think you’re worse than you used to be, because your only REAL awareness of your own past work is also of the highlights. Just as that’s your only awareness of what everyone else is shooting.

It’s a bit like panning for gold. You don’t know the gold is in the sieve thing until you give it a good jiggle, jiggle.

Right now if you’re anything like me you’re just too busy to jiggle the sieve and there’s months of sand sitting in the sieve waiting for you to jiggle it and release the gold.

Only when you start making really tight, highly curated selections for your portfolio/blog then you’ll be seeing the true ‘you’ gold in your work and feel way better about it.

And if you’re able to make yourself feel better about what you’ve been shooting, you’ll feel better during each wedding because you’ll trust that the gold is going to be in there.

Ideally we should make that a habit, to prevent us from getting into this frame of mind of being down on our own work. Pan for gold regularly.

The real issue – as always – is comparison. Comparison with others, and comparison with ourselves last week, last month, last year…

It’s virtually impossible not to compare ourselves in this social media age, but at least give yourself a fighting chance by always being aware of your best work.

Thanks for reading!

Adam