381 - Natural Bridges
Fuck... This is going to be a depressing post. If you're not into that go ahead and skip this one. Fortunately this shoot was at Natural Bridges though, an absolutely stunning location.
If you read my last adventure at Shore Acres, you'll have a little more context for what's going on here. Basically I'm processing the fact that my "plan" to monetize photography isn't going the way I'd assumed it would.
After messing around with B-Roll I managed to snag at Shore Acres, I realized how goddamn hard it was going to be to learn to film and edit a cinematic travel video- my next plan to get something viral to bring attention to my work. I also realized that most of my effort in filming and editing the past 200+ vlogs on YouTube has practically been a waste of time.
Probably 2,000+ hours of work?
This hit me really hard today, and I couldn't focus on shooting anything. Whenever I get sad or anxious, my mental state either begins to intensify my environment- and since we were shooting on a bunch of dusty cliffs, the edges freaked me out way more than normal.
Somehow along the way I also began to realize I'm chasing a lot of the same shots as other people, and that I need to be different if I want to succeed in this industry. This realization hit me when 6 different people, including me, were all trying to take the same shot at Natural Bridges with drones.
In an effort to make this location about the landscape instead of the person in the landscape, I made the subject of my shot a tree in the background... Perfectly centered with the cliff waters as a leading line towards it. Here's the shot:
Decent shot, for how shit my mood was and how smoky the coast was from the Oregon/Cali fires.
I also learned an important lesson today that took me way too long to learn. Shooting at f/22 isn't very sharp. I'd always HEARD this was the case, but never actually experimented with it myself. Since I wasn't exactly thinking straight, I was shooting at f/22, and it isn't the sharpest photo in the world.
Zoom in and check it out for yourself. Keep in mind EACH of those five cliffs are focus stacked, so it should be tack sharp in theory- especially with an a7rIII and Zeiss lens. I'll stick to f/13 next time.
All in all, just writing this has helped me process my situation a bit better. I have to realize WHY I'm doing photography in the first place. It's not about the numbers on social media and the income, it's about getting lost in the landscapes. The reason I fell in love with adventure photography in the first place.
The sooner I get that back to that as my priority, the easier this race to "make it" will be.
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
Want to see my progress? Check out the Adventure Map.
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