Getting outside the comfort zone

You will have seen from my profile and blogs so far I am very much a hobbyist photographer – taking images for my own pleasure and benefit. However, recently I have started saying yes to several opportunities with some surprising results!

It all started by me talking about my photography and helping others with some challenges they faced with taking the pictures they wanted. It has ballooned from there over the past year …

First there was my wife’s friend’s 70th birthday party and the classic “could I take a few shots of the event for them to remember it by”. Between my wife and myself we took over 150 pictures on the day (try doing that with film!) and after a bit of processing created a photobook with about 70 images from the event as our birthday gift to her. It was pretty good, even if I do say so myself, but the birthday girl was blown away with it. A successful step outside the comfort zone!

Then at work a colleague is doing some training on getting a professional LinkedIn profile, part of which is the photo of you. She asked if I could take some of her to use as she liked my profile picture – a “selfie” with my DSLR on a tripod. Profile pictures are now done and the results are so good I have already done another one and have a further team of four lined up over the next month … and this is before she has delivered any of the training!

The event photography continued with a request for volunteers to help at a conference being held at work – as the event is being organised by a team in the same department as me I put my name forward. After a chat with the organiser they have asked me to be the photographer on the day taking images of the speakers/audience/etc!

GULP!!

This is way outside my comfort zone and I will need to do a bit of You Tube training on pitfalls etc ahead of the day and be ready with settings, spare memory cards, batteries etc to make sure it all goes smoothly. Thankfully I do have a little bit of a dry run ahead of the day. Those online competitions I enter – some are days out with the camera manufacturers and I was lucky enough to win a day at Gifford’s Circus with Olympus.

Again, just helping people to get the photos they want has led onto being asked to run team build day around photography. The idea is to take people out of the work environment and break down the work/personal barriers by teaching them a bit about taking control of their camera and composition thrown in with a photo walk” to put into practice what they have learned. This is yet to take place, so we’ll see how that goes but again it is taking me outside my comfort zone by sharing my knowledge in a group of people I work with daily.

Some would say by doing these things I am stealing business from a professional photographer, especially as I have received comments that I should do it as a living (not sure if that is a compliment on my photography or I’m not very good at the “day job”!). However, the truth is only the conference would have even considered hiring a photographer for the day – the rest would not have been prepared to spend the money and either done without or continued with “snaps” from phones.

Arguably this is one of the biggest challenges today in that a professional, well taken image is not valued in the way they were in the past – not just by the general public but many press organisations who no longer have staff photographers, relying instead on freelancers/publicly sourced images to support their stories.

For me I have a skill I want to be able to share and bless others with – If I get paid, even with a free lunch, then I am happy. I’ll update you on how successful things are as things go.

I would encourage you to do the same – put yourself out there, just by talking about what you love to start with and saying yes to opportunities, even outside of your comfort zone - see what happens.

Keep on shooting!!