What About Mood?

A few weekends ago, I remember wanting to go out with the camera and spend some time just walking about. After breakfast, I went downstairs and started to sort my equipment and decide what I needed for a day's excursion.

Somehow, over the next hour, I lost interest or my mood changed; I really can't recall what happened, but I didn't leave the house.

The week before was one of high stress, where I worked long hours and traveled, on business, leaving me drained. Also, money was tight and my wife nagged about the difficulties of having enough, to pay all the bills.

The events from the previous week may have been triggers, but I know intellectually, getting out of the house with the camera has a calming effect and, over time, I would succumb to a more relaxed state and enjoy what I was doing. That's intellectually... Emotionally, I was drained and wanted nothing more than to sit back and read a trash novel. That day, emotions won over intellect.

How would I have handled this if I had had an assignment? Would my mental state have affected my ability to perform?

Late last night, I thought about this and and wrote down what some of the effects could have been.

1. Loss of focus (not camera)
2. Impatience
3. Loss of creativity
4. Prone to errors
5. Fatigue
6. Failure to fully plan and execute

...and so forth.

I know, from past experience, I would have come around sometime during the assignment, but is there some way to start the assignment in a better mood?

I think there are some things we can do to help ourselves move our emotions to the better end of the scale. Getting ready for an assignment is a ritual that puts our mind, for the moment, on thinking about what we need for the shoot. During this time, we isolate ourselves from everything, but the immediate, and put ourselves into a future where we visualize setting up for the assignment and getting the images. It's only when we have everything packed that the troubles of the day intrude.

I believe if we were to have some way to occupy ourselves between the packing and the actual shoot, we could stay in the moment. This is the key—staying in the moment and not dwelling on the past or thinking about the future allowing negative thoughts to surface.

Thinking about what if I do this or that, when the troubles occupy our thoughts, is what I call "doing outcomes." The more we run scenarios (what if he says this, then I say...), the deeper we go into ourselves and away from the present. We use the past and forecast the future. We're everywhere but in the now, the present.

As long as we allow ourselves not to be present, to move away from what needs to be done now, we thwart our creativity and production. Even if we take a break, from these thoughts, to do the assignment, the outcome scenarios play in our mind, like a recording stuck on replay.

The key, therefore, is to remain present, using the ritual of getting ready to propel ourselves into the assignment. When we feel the outcomes beginning to intrude, we must use our technical skill to concentrate on what we are doing right now, to stay the wolves of deception.

After a while, we will have taught ourselves a technique (just as valuable as a new photographic skill) which becomes automatic. This, then, is the direction I want to go and, if it works with photography, it should work in my every-day life.