Bangkok Street Photos & Overcoming Resistance

“When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favour in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetised rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.”

It was with these words from Stephen Pressfield’s excellent “War of Art” book ringing in my ears that I sat down and did my work. All weekend. Non-stop. Despite being in one of those grumpy moods that cartoonists depict by drawing a black cloud above somebody’s head, I took Resistance out behind the wood shed, blackened its eye and made it apologise for good measure.

For those of you who haven’t yet read Pressfield’s book, it’s central premise is that Resistance is a ubiquitous force which seeks to prevent us from realising our creative potential. Resistance comes in many guises, is persistent and pervasive and will “reason with you like a lawyer or jam a nine-millimeter in your face like a stickup man“. The only way to outsmart Resistance is to work. You must put your nose to the proverbial grindstone and Get On With It.

So that’s what I did. All weekend. I cleared an e-mail Inbox of a substantial backlog, tidied files, scanned letters, wrote proposals, processed images, drew up plans, compiled notes and cleaned my camera gear. And when Monday morning came, guess what…?

Yep, I still had an enormous black cloud hovering overhead. But I was organised and up-to-date. Resistance and I were even on points going into the twelfth round.

I’m working on a multimedia project at the moment. It requires me to take a series of street photographs in my neighbourhood. I’d booked some time in my diary to shoot some more material this afternoon but found myself finding reasons to put it off. Pressfield would argue that Resistance is “not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. Resistance is the enemy within.” Well, with nobody else to blame I realised that I’d better pick up my camera and get out the door a bit sharpish. So that’s what I did.

The first hour was mostly unproductive. I’d walked along a couple of familiar streets but found nothing of any great interest. But I made myself take frames, made myself work on composition, check exposures and vary my viewpoints. Eventually, things started to gel. A car mechanic working on a disemboweled tuk-tuk greeted me enthusiastically and I crouched down beside him as he drained oil from the sump. I took a few portraits, hobbled around on my knees to lose the distracting background and found a composition that worked.

Then I was off. Not flying exactly but plodding my way around the streets, making frames, working at them, getting them to work. Resistance was on the apron and the Ref was counting to ten.

I found quite a few of the images that I need for my project. It’s a step forward. But the best reward for my efforts came on the way home when I found a group of boys larking around in an alley outside their home. Never one to knowingly turn-down an opportunity for a bit of larking around I joined in and between us we soon had a series of images that made us all smile. So I thought I’d share them with you as proof of my winning bout with Resistance.

I receive, on average, two e-mails each day from photography students in various parts of the world asking for my advice on some aspect of working as a professional photographer. After my initial surprise that they’ve written to me at all and having checked that the e-mail wasn’t intended for David duChemin, I do my best to answer as many of them as I can. I’m pleased to offer what little advice I have but what I really want to say, but rarely do, is that photography is like any other creative endeavour. The technical stuff will fall into place and the rest you can make up as you go. The crucial thing has to be to keep working. Every day. And that’s the moral of my little tale. No more. No less. Keep making frames, keep checking your backgrounds, adjusting your composition, watching your histograms and engaging with your subjects. There’s really no secret. It’s just your job. Get On With It.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 12:19 am and is filed under Blog, My work and tagged with bangkok, street, thailand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.