Face Your Fears

Photography can be lonely and daunting. Even when you’re part of a team, it’s still just you and your camera. Nobody else is looking through that viewfinder. Nobody else is responsible for that frame.

Years of experience and a bag full of tricks haven’t changed that. I still f***k up. At my first corporate event I forgot the quick release plate for my tripod, and I had accidentally toggled my mic settings, which left the audio unusable. I only found out when it was too late to fix. Experience doesn’t stop mistakes. It just makes you quicker to forgive them.

I’m known for my fitness content, and for making someone feel like themselves in a one to one shoot. I’m proud of that. But I also know that a niche can quietly become a box. It can start to limit what I want from my life and my work, and I’m the one who has to decide whether I stay inside it.

Buying a pro flash was one small way of testing the walls. It opened the door to another niche, professional headshots. I’ve only done one so far, for a friend. He loved it, and he’s since made it his LinkedIn profile picture. One shoot isn’t a new career, but seeing my work sit at the top of someone’s professional identity told me that stepping outside what I’m known for doesn’t mean leaving it behind.

The first roadblock has been video. It frightened me, and it cost me jobs. In hindsight, all I had to do was face the fear. It’s gotten better, but I’m still playing catch up with my peers, and that’s humbling to admit.

The irony is that I haven’t even filmed myself talking about mindful photography. It’s a subject close to my heart. I could speak about it for hours. And yet that’s the camera I keep avoiding. It turns out the fear isn’t about the gear or the skill. It’s about being seen from the other side of the lens.

Then there’s AI. My first approach was head in the sand. I told myself it couldn’t affect me, because my style of storytelling could never be replaced. Famous last words, probably.

I’ve embraced it better than I did video, but it brings its own kind of overwhelm. Every week there’s a new platform, a new tool, a new thing I’m supposedly already behind on. The fear is that if you don’t keep up quickly enough, you lose out. 

Don’t get me wrong, video and AI still scare me. But I’ve learnt that fear left alone just grows. So I’m trying to sit with it, understand it, and take the next small step anyway.

Because the alternative is getting left behind.