On celebration

Curled, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Wood, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Autumn sky, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Markus Spring graciously provided feedback about my photographs, of which I'm thankful. And he had quite an impressive photograph of his on display.

However, instead of feeling good, my first reaction to reading his words were "Oh no!" And then I had to think a bit to find out why I got such a response.

Markus was writing about the "practice, practice, practice" aspect of photography, the fact that only by trying and failing can you learn a skill (whatever skill it is). And he is very much right in stressing the importance of practice.

I think I got the "Oh no!" reaction because of the fear (which is of course quite unreasonable) of being pressed into performing. Photography is for me an avenue for relaxation - and also being outside walking, with physical health benefits as well - and thus photography is a hobby which could be easily destroyed by feelings of having to perform, having to produce great photographs, or anything of that kind.

Maybe I'm a bit strange in this respect. Many people have hobbies where they aim high and really like the positive feedback they get. In fact, the feedback can be a central source of motivation for the hobby. But for some reason this is a difficult thing for me to handle - things turn too serious too easily. Maybe some facet of personality I can't easily analyze myself.

Also, this may have something to do with the Finnish mentality. I read a nice story about this in a book by Olavi Toivola. (The book is Johtajan ilo ja tuska - kokemus opettaa. Some impressions of the book are here in Finnish.) This is from memory as I don't have the book any more.

Toivola tells a story about two daughter companies of an American paper company. The other is French and the other Finnish. The American company gives new challenging targets on quality and productivity to the daughter companies. To discuss the new targets, an American executive visits first the French company and then the Finnish one.

In France there is a party (with sparkling wine of course). The French staff is celebrating the certainty of reaching the goals because there is such a great team appointed to lead the work. In Finland there is a short business meeting where the Finnish staff say that the targets are hard to reach but they have already started working on this.

After the deadline, the executive visits the daughter companies again. In France there is again a party, the staff celebrating that they have achieved 80% of the target and still progressing. However, in Finland there is a short business meeting, where it is noted that all the targets have been achieved. However, the Finnish staff note that they understand that even harder targets will be set in the future, so they are working on progressing beyound the original targets. At this point the American executive comments to the Finns: "Maybe you should try celebrating sometimes."

So, maybe what is needed is to forget the worry and have fun with whatever you do, and don't mind the results.

And there is always the choice of stopping if things get too stressing. Also, I have a feeling that a drawback to the digital world is the immediacy of feedback. Waiting some days to see how your photographs look developed, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. You had a better perspective on what you did.