life – Promoting Passion

Training for the Creative Marathon

brookeshaden — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 14:41:04 +0000

We can learn a lot from athletes. They know, factually and without dispute, that they must practice before they compete. A runner knows that he or she must run most days leading up to a marathon to build endurance. A high jumper knows that he or she must practice in order to be able to achieve the jump of their dreams. Yet a lot other professions, passions or hobbies aren’t necessarily seen in the same way. Photographers and artists, for some reason, seem exempt in this category. We get an idea, and then when it doesn’t work out, we consider it, or ourselves, a failure. So rarely do we try again, each day, practicing until we get it right. We simply assume we are not good at it.

Part of the problem is how we view the arts. We are taught that art is something very natural, that if we are to be good at it we are born that way with a certain intuition and magic. Yet it does not have to be so. I am not naturally good at very many things. Photoshop is not intuitive to me, and I have to work hard. I always have. In school I got mediocre grades, didn’t get into any great colleges, and I worked twice as hard as anyone I knew in school then. So working hard isn’t an issue, but self-confidence can be.

Like any athlete, if you do put in the practice and you don’t see any obvious changes, it is easy to get discouraged. We practice and fail and don’t seem to get better – we can’t log our running times our measure our high jumps – so it might all seem for naught. But, instead of getting so down on ourselves, we must simply figure out a way to measure how much our practice time is helping.

One way to do that is to create a running list of everything that you’ve learned from failing. Each time you try something new and fail, write down one thing that you learned from the process. For a photographer, it might be certain lighting, a tool in Photoshop, etc. The second thing to do is to actively seek a solution. If you can’t figure out how to do something in Photoshop, go searching for the answer to that specific thing. What if we all took more notice of what exactly has gone wrong and how to fix it, *and* we practiced each day for the thing we love most?

I did this in high school. I practiced everyday, took note of things I was bad at, sought out extra help in areas I needed to improve, and yet still, despite all of that, I did not get into a great college. I still got bad grades. What I have learned since leaving the school system has been life-changing. When I was trapped in that way of thinking, I did not have the capacity to judge myself outside of the standards imposed on me: testing, grading, report cards, etc. I thought that the measure of my worth was directly proportional to how “fridge-worthy” my report card was. And so I judged myself based on rules that someone else created.

What I know now is that there is no way of grading your passion. There is no way of knowing if you are certainly getting better or worse. All we can know is this: the way the tide breaks on our life is a particular pattern that only we can learn to love. We cannot change the way the tide breaks, we can only jump in the waves or stand aside and watch it happen. We can choose to pursue our passion or we can give up trying. And no one can grade us on hard we played in the waves. That is for us to know, and so our worth is not measurable by mathematic standards, but instead by how much we practiced what we love.

Creating New Worlds

brookeshaden — Wed, 26 Nov 2014 15:00:43 +0000

I’ve been going through old files in an attempt to do a comprehensive update of my CV. In doing so, I’ve been looking through various publications, but none caught my eye so much as this one…that has nothing to do with photography, but instead about a short film I made. Seeing it unlocked so many memories of how I used to create. Sometimes it feels as though photography is my only passion and the only one I had ever pursued. But the fact is that before I ever picked up a still camera I wielded a motion picture camera. And before that, I wrote.

What was most interesting about this writeup was the drastic similarity between the film I made in 2008 and the images I create now. The headline reads: “Shaden Creates Three Worlds…” while my quote inside reads, “We wanted to blur the lines between fantasy and reality.”

I worked on that film for one full year of my life. I put my heart and soul into it. And you know what? It really wasn’t very good. I had little concept of how to create characters and how to write a script. But at the end of the day, good or bad, it was so unbelievably me.

We can get so caught up in our craft that we forget to look at the bigger picture. For an artist who has a recognizable mark, it shouldn’t matter if they are working within their comfort zone, medium, or space. It is likely that an artist with a strong voice will be able to create their art in different genres. It might not be immediately similar, but it will have the same life, the same soul.

I can’t claim to be one of those artists; I haven’t tried hard enough to test myself. But what I am reminded of today is the amazing talent we all possess to find the voice inside that wants to be let out. When I was in my early teens I used to write morbid stories of blood and supernatural happenings…think of a Radiohead song turned into a short story. When I was in high school I took a filmmaking class on a bet, and fell in love with visual storytelling. The first film I created was about a girl hanging herself in a basement. The next one was about a girl who went crazy, broke out of an insane asylum, and drowned herself in a pool.

No one can say my heart wasn’t in it.

I know what I want to say. I know that my artistic voice makes people uncomfortable. It always has, ever since I can remember. From teachers telling me to cheer things up to my family wondering why I concentrated on death so much. But along the way there have been certain markers that have given me the confidence to keep going. A certain teacher telling me I wrote well. My short film of that girl drowning herself winning a local film festival. This article of my college film in Kodak magazine. And in photography…it is you. It is community. It is having a space to share what I love and being able to do so with people who do not judge me for it, but support me.

Milestones come in many ways. Sometimes they are concrete, and we can point to a product and date. But sometimes, and I believe them to be the most important times, are when they are substantial yet intangible; when you look around and have nothing to hold or write down on your resume, but instead have a full heart and a community of people who spread the love.

Thank you for being my milestone in photography, and for giving me the confidence to keep creating, expanding, and sharing.

Dealing with Disappointment

brookeshaden — Sun, 12 Oct 2014 17:09:57 +0000

If I had to share one of my biggest weaknesses, it would without a doubt be how I deal with disappointment. I hold myself to extremely high standards, something that a lot of people do, and when I don’t meet those standards, I feel the effects tremendously. I received an email recently that rocked my world in about 5 words. It wasn’t life-changing. It wasn’t mean. It wasn’t anything but the simple truth: someone was not fully satisfied with something I had done.

Give me a nasty comment online about my photos and I shrug it off. If someone doesn’t like the work I create, it doesn’t hurt me. I don’t spend my time looking into negativity. I don’t spend my days worrying about if people like what I do or not. What does get me, every single time, is how people experience me as a person. I put a lot of pressure on myself to be at my best all the time, and it physically pains me to think that I have given someone less than that.

Everyone deals with disappointment in different ways. It might be disappointment in a product, in someone else, or in yourself. In my case, I have trouble dealing with disappointment in myself. I hold everyone and everything in my life to high standards, but none more than me personally. I don’t deal with disappointment well. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I get physically ill. Sometimes I want to stop everything that I’ve worked for so as to never feel that feeling again.

Just a couple hours ago I said, out loud, that I wanted to quit my job. I didn’t want to move forward with any of the projects I’ve been working on for fear of being judged, rejected, or disappointing someone. Yet even as I thought about quitting, I could hear my future self, the one who wants to push harder and move further, talking rather loudly in my ear. She was telling me that if I never put myself out there I can never be a positive influence in the world. If I never put myself out there I can never do what my heart is set on doing. Yet the other side, like a little devil sitting on my shoulder, told me that I will do too much harm to make it worth it.

I will let people down. I will be a disappointment. I will never be what someone wants me to be.

Yet all the while, I will be myself. I will try to work on my journey and how I see the world and how I interact with it. I will try to be a better person. I will try to touch people’s lives for the better. I will try, and trying is all we can expect of each other.

That is a truth that I know intimately. It is a truth I have come face to face with many times. There are days when I want to quit. Right now, at this very moment, I have that desire deep in my bones. I don’t want to mess up. I don’t want to be a disappointment. Yet even greater than that is the knowledge that when one perseveres, tries harder, and becomes a better person, other people will benefit as well.

I might fail a hundred times, but if I succeed at only one thing, I hope it is to help someone, somewhere, in some way. In any way. To spread the love that I feel inside. And should I fail, I will welcome that failure with open arms. I will regret nothing because I tried my best. I will work to correct my mistakes. I will progress. I will challenge myself. I will try.

Let yourself feel what your body wants to feel. Let yourself be emotional and scared and understand, in those moments, how terrifying it is to put yourself out there. But when that feeling passes, even if only in a small amount, remind yourself of how incredible you are. You are only one small human, and yet in being so, you are powerful beyond measure. Next time you fall, remember that if you never did, you could not understand the immense honor of reaching peaks. All of life is made up of valleys and mountain tops that seem out of reach, yet both are attainable. We will fall and we will rise again, and we will do so understanding more about life each time.

Follow the Leader

brookeshaden — Sat, 23 Aug 2014 14:16:26 +0000

All my life people have asked me if I am a leader or if I am a follower. Undoubtedly you have been asked, or have pondered, the same thing. I used to think I was definitely, 100% a follower. I was afraid to lead people, after all. My shyness always got the better of me. I preferred to be in my head than in a social situation. Everything pointed me in the direction of simply being more comfortable following someone else than taking the lead.

But then I got older, and I thought a lot more about what it means to truly be a leader. It doesn’t mean that you have people following your every move, or that you speak in front of big groups of people, or that you make epic speeches like in the movies. It is a solidarity with oneself, a resolve to do what makes your heart sing, and the confidence to move forward without following someone’s footsteps.

We are all leaders and we are all followers. What matters most is not whether you are predominantly one or the other, but if you are leading yourself. The rest will follow.

How often, in your own life, do you choose the road less traveled? How often do you give yourself permission to go where no one has gone before, or to do something out of your comfort zone. It is easier to follow because it is safe. We find security in knowing that someone else has been through what we will go through. Yet someone had to be first. Everything starts with something. Don’t live your life with someone else’s decisions.

Take hold of what is dear to you. Lead yourself through the unknown and trust in your instincts. Know that you have the power to pull yourself up should you fall, the ingenuity to break new ground, and the love of self to know it is worth it. The greatest things in this world are achieved through personal exploration. Do what you love because you love it. Don’t search the internet for an instruction manual. If you should fall, you will get back up. Falling is not failing, it is a lesson learned on the way to success.

Move bravely on your journey, and you may soon find others following in your footsteps.