Photography mental health. All photos ©Al Macphee/MiraclePR
As I explained in a previous post, there’s no such thing as a typical day for a pro photographer. If you’re a popular photographer, you’re going to be busy. I’m always careful to pace myself when I’ve got a really long, hectic weekend because if I spread myself too thinly, the quality of my work will suffer!
Photography mental health:You’re only as good as your last job
Photography is a high concentration job. Last weekend I must have shot eight to ten thousand frames. On the Thursday, I was preparing for the weekend because I knew that I wouldn’t have a chance to change batteries, format cards or even breathe! The Friday morning, I was up to do a short notice wedding in Torquay. It was a wedding I had agreed to to help someone out with, but it was still the bride and groom’s big day. You’ve got to get your pictures and diplomacy right because, as I explain in another article, the best way to get work is to work.
Besides, you’re only as good as your last job. If I had messed up that wedding, then I wouldn’t get any more weddings from anyone there. My reputation would be trashed. So, I need to get a good night’s sleep and get my head in the right space.
Manage your time to be in the right frame of mind
Straight after the wedding, I covered a cup final. That was another four hours of stress and concentration, and I didn’t get home until ten at night. Then I’m up again on the Saturday morning to do an Under 9s, 10s, 11s and 12s football tournament for the FA and Ellevate, an app company. So, that would be another long day of high concentration because I had to take shots of every team plus presentations. I decided to arrive an hour after the start because I looked at the schedule and thought, ‘If I’m in the right frame of mind, I can whizz through these teams.’
So, I chose to drink two cups of coffee before I left the house. I knew that I would have spent that first hour struggling to wake up, so there was no point being early. I used the time to get myself in the right frame of mind, so that when I arrived I would be properly awake and would actually set the camera right and not make any mistakes.
Half way through the day, during a cup final, the Chief Executive of the Devon FA comes up to me, and says, “Can you come and do a photo call with Ellevate.” Now, if I hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep, and wasn’t in the right frame of mind, I would have given him a gobful and upset a client! He wanted to do the photo call there and then, but hadn’t realised I was in the middle of a final (as he admitted afterwards). The new sponsors wouldn’t have realised how many hours I had done the day before, or what I still had to do. They would just think, ‘He’s a miserable bugger!’ As it was, I handled it correctly by laughing and joking.
Photography mental health: Plan your food and drink around your body’s needs
Going back to the Friday, I was at the wedding until half past four or five, and the football from six, so finding time to eat was an issue. I nipped home in between to change, but it would have been a rush to cook and eat some food. Besides, if I had taken my shoes off and sat down on the settee, I would have been asleep within half an hour. But if I waited until I got home at ten at night, even if I had a microwave meal (which isn’t that good for you anyway), I would be eating at ten fifteen at night. Now, I know my body. That meal’s going to lie on my stomach, and I would be up at three in the morning with heartburn.
So, I made the decision to get to the cup final with half an hour spare. I sat outside on a bench with a meal and a cup of tea and people milling around. I could relax and keep an eye on what was going on while keeping my brain active.
On another day, I might feel I need to hide around a corner to enjoy a cup of tea, because if I’ve got a yellow vest on, somebody is going to tackle me for something. When I’m ready to go back into the storm and talk to people, I go back in.
You need to work out how your own body and mind work. If your body’s quite happy with you eating late at night, work through and eat later. If you need to be with people, find company. If you need to be on your own, find a quiet space.
Taking care of the family
Find time for yourself and your family. Decide on what’s important to you. Find that fine balance between work and play/relaxation. Your camera will only work if it’s got good batteries in it: your brain will only work properly if you’re in the right headspace and not too tired.
Getting time to yourself to breathe, etc. is not just really important to your own and your work’s health, it’s important to your family’s health because you don’t want to be going home stressing. If you have a bad day at work, your nearest and dearest will probably understand if you’re grumpy, but you don’t want to be shouting at the kids just because you’re tired! If you alienate your environment, you won’t get the support you need, will you?
You don’t want to be having a go at the dogs just because they’re barking at the postman. They’re doing their job. If the dogs are creating havoc, think about it logically. If they’re winding you up, it’s because you’re not in the right headspace. It’s not their fault.
If you’re struggling to get on with your work, you shouldn’t be trying to do your work. You might mess something up. If the dogs or the kids are climbing the walls, take them out. They’ll get some exercise and fresh air and at the same time, you will come back in a better headspace.
Now when you get back to work, the dogs will be sleepy. The cat can walk past them without them barking, so you won’t be constantly telling them off.
Photography mental health: Pace yourself
On the Saturday evening I gave myself some nice chill out time on the beach with the dogs. It took me all the time in the world to get down there, but it recharged me. When I’m walking the dogs, I’m not concentrating, I’m just relaxing. I had a decent meal and got to bed at a decent time.
I was up again at five on Sunday morning to get to the next job at seven. A triathlon in the rain! You need to be really awake for an event like that because you need to wrap your kit, make sure there are no rain spots on your lenses, avoid wiping your kit with a wet cloth, etc. That was also a high concentration job, because not only did I have to get the pictures right, but I had to get them passing a particular point. So, I had to see them coming.
I ended up parking at the airfield, on a long stretch of road, facing the way the competitors were coming, but on the opposite side of the road. When they came past, I jumped out of the car, ran across the road, got to my spot, and flash, bang, wallop! I got them as they passed the fuel dump for the airport. That typifies the event, which was a route past several historic airfields in Devon and Somerset. Because it was designed along these lines, I didn’t want my background to be country lanes. I wanted them to be airfields.
If you’re half asleep, you’re liable to do something silly like opening your car door with a vehicle coming up behind you. On a rainy day, you could cause all manner of problems, just by being not all there. So, it’s really important to pace yourself.
Then that afternoon, I was off to another cup final. Can you imagine how shattered I would have been if I had just gone from one job to the next, to the next, to the next without finding some time for myself? Going back to the youth football tournament, the under 9s and 10s finished at 12.30. The under 11s and 12s started at 1.30. I used that hour to charge my batteries again.
On the Monday I had filing to do, and that meant getting my workflow right. Filing the Sportiva triathlon was simple. It was just uploading images to a server for people to download, so I set that up overnight on Sunday. I got up on Monday morning and deliberately sat there until I was ready to move up to the office. Getting my head together. Again, pacing myself. The FA needed three picture selections, with a hundred or so pictures in each, by Tuesday morning. So I did a picture selection, break, picture selection, break, picture selection, break.
Don’t push yourself. If you’ve got eight hours before anyone’s going to touch your pictures, and you’ve nothing else to do that day, why push yourself and do it in four? Breathe! As I said earlier, with weekends like this, you can spread yourself too thinly and make mistakes. You could accidentally drop and drag the wrong picture selection across.
When you’re finishing your images off in Photoshop or Lightroom, you can make silly mistakes when tired. You can sharpen an image twice, get your colour balance wrong, etc.
I know my brain as far as filing and Photoshop are concerned. If I’m having to think about where I’m putting that file, I need a rest. If I click on the wrong place three times when using the clone tool to get rid of a dust mark, I’ve got to walk away from it. If I’m not in the frame of mind for Photoshop, something that normally takes me an hour might take me six hours.
Photography mental health: What do you need to stay mentally fit?
I have this little routine of just sitting quiet in the morning with plenty of time to chill and a nice cup of coffee, but you will need to find your own way to get in the right frame of mind for work. If you want your morning telly or radio, you put these on.
It’s the same when you’re winding down after work. Don’t rush yourself. Have a drink, a cheese sandwich, a couple of digestive biscuits… . If you want to take the dogs for a walk, you take the dogs for a walk – whatever it takes to wind you down.
My working week tends to be Thursday to Monday. Then I stop and I rest. I do whatever I want, whenever I want. That might be tidying the shed out or wallpapering the bedroom. That might be graft for a decorator, but for me, I’m improving my environment for my own mental health.
Photography mental health: Do what you can to take the pressure off
If you’re finding the pressure’s too much and you need help, you’ve got to ask for it. In the early days of shooting weddings, I could never sleep that night. I couldn’t do anything on the Sunday or Monday. At least with digital you know that when you’ve backed your images up and backed them up again, you’ve got those files. You’ve seen them on the screen. You know they’re there.
In the old days of film, you would be trusting a third party to develop the film. They could mess up your album. You could end up with scratches down the film or anything. So, I used to be really worried all the way through from that Saturday nght until I got those proofs back from the lab. Basically, it’s because it’s somebody’s big day. They’ve trusted you to do a good job, and you’ve trusted somebody else. The bride and groom aren’t going to come back and say, “That’s OK, it’s the lab’s fault, not yours.” At the end of the day, the buck stops with you.
Even with digital, if you get home from a wedding and sit straight down in front of the telly, you’ve only seen those images on the back of the camera. At that size, images can look sharp. It’s not until you’ve zoomed in on them on a computer screen that you can tell for sure. So, if you’re at all worried, what I would do (and I do this religiously) is plug your cards into the machine and back them up straight away. Besides, if I leave those cards on the table, God forbid the dogs eat one of them or the missus tidies them away in the bottom of a drawer somewhere so I can’t find them. I’ve got to make sure that those cards are in my office and on my computer. The images are backed up and I’ve seen a few images on the screen. I check them in sections: the ceremony, the kiss, etc.
Then I can switch off and relax for the rest of the night. Otherwise, it will be eleven at night, you’ll be just getting to the end of Marvel Avengers Endgame or something, and a worry will pop into your head. “Did I get that kiss?” You’ll then have to faff about switching the computer on and checking images, otherwise it will stay on your mind all night and you won’t get any sleep.
So, do it first thing. Make sure you’ve got those images. Make sure they’re backed up. Then you can get a decent kip without anything coming back to haunt you.
Have a burning photography question you would like Al to write about in his next blog post? Email info@miraclepr.com with your request.