Prefectionism, Elliot Erwitt, and brake pads

Perfectionism can paralyze photographers. It crops up as a desire to take a better picture. It makes you jaded. It makes you avoid taking a shot: "The light isn't quite right", "The background is too busy", "The subject is uninteresting". My perfectionism was certainly getting to me. My perfectionism got worse as I got better. I felt the need to make every next shot I take better than my previous shot. At some point I felt unable to take pictures. At times I would carry my photo backpack on a trip and never take my camera out because "there was nothing interesting to shoot". However, the truth is that I was afraid of failure. I was afraid of taking a mediocre picture, because that would make me a mediocre photographer in my own eyes. If I don't do anything, I can't make mistakes, right?

While browsing Magnum Photos last night I came across a slide show of personal favorites by Elliot Erwitt narrated by the author. I've enjoyed the subtle humor of Erwitt's photographs before. However, his unassuming attitude got my attention this time. I decided to try to let go of my fears.

As the first step of breaking out of the chains of perfectionisms and accepting that every one of my photos cannot be perfect I uploaded a bunch of photos from my cellphone. Since only amateurs take photos with a cellphone, there can't possibly be any good photos there, right? I was ready to see a bunch of my own bad photos. And, indeed, there was a lot flawed photos. However, I was surprised to realize that all these photos meant something to me. These were random photos that collected in my cellphone since I got it almost 2 years ago. There were a lot of hardly discernible (due to low resolution, noise, and motion blur) yet memorable moments captured there. I was enjoying looking at these fragments from my past! It didn't matter if the composition was "compelling" or if the exposure was "on the spot". I simply enjoyed looking at these photos, they brought back memories. I felt liberated.

Despite my fears, I found that many of the images were sufficiently well composed by my own standards. I took these images out of boredom while playing with my cellphone or just in a spur of a moment. Since I got my dSLR, I've been shooting very much with my head: "how will this look?", "how do I compose this shot?", "should I change the angle to get a better perspective?", "is this background ok?", "can I avoid these wires/branches/cars/people/etc?", "what aperture/shutter speed should I use?". If I am shooting landscape subjects or still life, I usually take time to answer these questions. My cellphone photos were not taken with nearly as much thought, yet they many of them were clearly good enough for me to enjoy. The lesson was clear: I should trust my gut more.

During the slide show mentioned above, Elliot Erwitt conceded that it is hard to get excited by the everyday environment even for him. Luckily, an opportunity to escape Mira Mesa came up today. My friend was planning to change his brake pads at a shop located in Escondido, CA. Even though Escondido is not known for great vistas or large social gatherings, I decided to take advantage of this opportunity and went along with my friend.

Here is the result of my trip: Escondido, CA. There is a number of photos there that I took just because I wanted to. Some of them may require some thought. Some are just want they are. You might notice that I could not escape perfectionism completely by looking at the "Bad Drivers" series. However, I decided to upload the multiple "Bad Drivers" shots to show how my thinking about the shot progressed before I got to the final one.