When A Street Photographer Gets Stage Fright
I got the picture. Alas! That does not make it a good one.
So, I think I have street photographer’s stage fright. Maybe a better way to describe it is that under certain circumstances I choke when taking a picture. Of course, it is not just any picture. It is the one that I am most keen to get every single week when I am out shooting in Nashville’s entertainment district. You see, every week on Broadway is a lot like every other week. Except that there are 3 or so novel situations or especially interesting characters that I have never seen before. I dearly want to get good pictures of them. I am rarely successful.
These three guys, wearing their college colors, were friendly and having a lot of fun. It is always harder for me to be successful getting a picture when I am behind the people whose picture I want to take. How do I catch up and get ahead of them?
Believe me, I have thought about this track record of failure. It may be that I have figured out what is happening. The insight came from the Human Brain podcast, Stage Fright, hosted by Shankar Vedantam. Shankar interviewed cognitive scientist, Sian Beilock, about why so many of us crumble under pressure. Here is how it happens for me.
Sometimes a close up, even if taken from behind has some interest. The bottom line is, in the end, it is taken from behind.
We all have what is known as “working memory”. When we are engaged in street photography, our working memory includes the skills we use to identify what picture we should be taking, the skills to manage the exposure, the skills to create the composition, and the skills to actually take the picture. For the most part, I have the skills to manage the exposure down pat. In fact, it is such second nature to me that it might even be what is known as procedural memory. I know how to choose the ISO, the shutter speed and the aperture based on the available light and my particular goals for the shot. I do not have to think about it a lot. It is one stop shopping for me, so to speak.The issues of composition are also, for the most part, on auto pilot. I understand where I need to be to to get my desired shooting angle. I can generally see how the background is going to add to or subtract from the composition. I am aware of how my subjects are separated. The mechanics of taking a picture are also straightforward. I have owned my camera for a long time, so I know where buttons and dials are and what they do. Which is not to say that I never make mistakes. I went through an annoying phase not too long ago where I was hitting the button to start a video instead of the shutter release button. Sometimes I think I am shooting with a particular focal length on my zoom lens, when I am not. That can produce terrible results, like unintentional decapitation. Lots can and does go wrong, but for the most part I can expect a lot to go right. I have a number of photography procedures that my working memory can use. This frees me up to look for the novel; that is, something that would make an interesting photo like a unique character or unusual light.
I got another chance, but it was just mission failure. I needed to let the scene develop, but I could not figure out how to wait for that.
This works well enough that I surprise myself, almost every week, when I come home convinced I have taken no post-able photos. I find that is not the case when I download. The process was automatic enough that I do not remember the particulars of taking most of the images. What I do remember is the photos I was not able to take. The ones I really wanted but missed, quite possibly because I choked.
Who could not take a good picture of this man and his dog? It is actually a two-fer, because the people he was talking to were just as interesting.
When I see a novel opportunity, the thought that flashes across my mind is that I will only have one chance to get the picture. I feel anxious and hyper focus on pressing the shutter button at the right time. It is like my photography brain turns off. I cannot do the thing I have practiced to do.
Total mission failure. When I look at the yellow color match, it makes it an even larger failure. I had a huge compositional opportunity.
I am real interested in how to get around this problem. Here are the suggestions that were made in the podcast.
Practice
Some of my photography procedures, like knowing exactly when to press the shutter to get a whole figure in the frame, are still a work in progress. I have made huge strides since October, but it does not take much to disrupt that skill. If I take a week off from shooting, it is noticeably harder when I do get back out. I suppose there will always be the need to practice.
This actually is not a stage fright failure. I just could not figure out how to get a picture of this guy separated from the background. My ISO was 1600, and the shutter speed was 1/500 sec. That was not fast enough. I saw him every weekend in the fall of 2020. I assumed I would have many chances to practice. I have never seen him in 2021.
Practice doing well under pressure.
This is going to be easy. There are lots of opportunities for me to feel pressure. The chief one is going out with someone else to shoot. Because this creates anxiety for me, I almost always shoot alone. Clearly, I need to have more photo walk play dates. Shooting posed street portraits also creates enormous discomfort. The possibility that I ask to take a picture and then fail to take a good picture is a big barrier for me. I am beginning to seek out those opportunities.
Reframe the anxiety.
Being worried and being excited feels the same. I always frame the feeling as worried. I am going to try to frame the feeling as excited. When I see something novel that begs to be photographed, I want to see it as a great opportunity not as something I dread.
Remember why I should succeed.
This an easy enough pep talk. I tried it out last Saturday when I was out. I simply kept repeating to myself when I felt pressure, “You know how to do this.”
Learn as a child.
Really? Yes. That water is under the bridge for me. Maybe I can help a grandchild learn to take pictures and give that lifetime gift of being a photography thriver instead of a choker.