Yesterday, I had a headshot client here: a local actor who I knew before from film work she’d done with Mark. (She was in Sofia’s movie, actually.) My new lights aren’t here yet, so our friend Heath was a dear and brought me over a big light from the studio he works with, since there just isn’t enough natural light here this time of year to do much of anything, let alone provide the sort of clarity an actor’s headshot needs to have.
She had told me that she didn’t think she was especially photogenic. I had told her that generally, I’m not sure there is such a thing, that I think that’s really a matter of the photographer doing their job both technicaly and socially. Plus, she’s got an amazing, unique face and we like each other a lot: I just couldn’t imagine not being able to do great work with her.
I woke up early, prepped the studio, felt as competent as I usually do, despite having a cold. But throughout the shoot, while I kept finding some great compositions and angles, my camera was not cooperating with me. It kept refusing to focus. The lights were giving me trouble, being either way too strong or too flat. I moved them here, I moved them there: I used the tripod, I worked without it. I kept cursing inanimate objects in the presence of a client. All the same, while I didn’t think I was getting as many great shots in a sitting as I tend to, and I wanted to pull my hair out, I thought I was doing alright.
Later that night, I unloaded the card and was decidedly not happy. About 1/3 of the shots were blurry, or I didn’t get the focus in the place I wanted to: I kept getting sharp focus on hair or lips and soft focus on eyes, the latter of which is where you really need focus in headshots. Another 1/3 of the shots were so overlit, half her face was washed out and overexposed. There were some AMAZING shots I’d see in the thumbnail view, get all excited about, then enlarge them and discover that one of the two aforementioned issues fucked the shot entirely. There was an awful lot of “Gah!” “Arrrrgh!” and “Fuckity-fuck-fuck-FUCK!” resonating in my office last night.
That isn’t to say there aren’t some winners (like the shot above at right, which is my favorite). There are, even to the point that I suspect — and hope — she’ll feel she got some of the best photos ever taken of her. But. I am used to having clients, especially paying clients, tell me that they don’t even know how to pick just one or two for their needs because there are so, so many great ones. And I want that to be the result. I feel like if I shoot for an hour, I should have a client walking away with at least 50 shots or so that are technically perfect, very creative, and which all could suit their needs, but in which there will be one or two that are just right in terms of the specificity of what they wanted. I’m just not comfortable giving them less than that, because I feel like I have not done my job.
I penned an email I have never had to pen to a paying client, telling her that for no fault of her own, I clearly wasn’t on my game, letting her know I had some great shots, but not enough for me to feel I’d done the service for her she’d paid for, and offering for her to come reshoot at her convenience if she wanted at no extra charge. I can think of only three times before this, and never with a paying client, that I’ve had to tell someone I just thought what I did was pretty crap per my standards, and I haven’t had to do so at all in a couple of years, paid or unpaid.
Mark called on the way home from working on a reel for a commercial gig he has coming up, and in telling him all of this (and I speak far more candidly with him than I do with all of you), and listening to his reaction, in writing that email and listening to the way I was talking to myself about all this, I started to feel pretty seriously embarassed. The embarassment wasn’t at doing less than my best — okay, some of it was — it was at my total and complete lack of allowance for my own imperfect humanity; at hearing myself honestly say out loud — and sound like a total asshole in saying — that while I absolutely allowed for others to have off-days, and thought nothing lesser of them, I do not feel the same towards myself.
(Mark: Everyone has an off-day, babe. Me: Everyone but ME! I may NOT! Mark: Yeah, okay, Princess. I’ll be waiting at the foot of the tower when you’re ready to come down. Actually, he stopped at “Okay, Princess,” but if HE was on his game, he would have finished with that line, so we’ll let him have it, just to be nice.)
It’s not that I think I’m better than everyone else in some intrinsic way, but I do often think that I work harder and longer than most, that I refuse to stop working at anything less than genius or perfection unless there just isn’t another sliver of energy left, that other people seem to set their standards for themselves lower than I’m willing to set mine for myself.
It’s ridiculous, really. And when I speak these things out loud, they all sound way less sensible and far more pretentious, arrogant and silly than they do when they’re in the confines of my mind.
I think this is part of the problem with working out some of your issues and demons via art and/or work. The part of me that often still believes she’s just not good enough for anything, and that she has to work harder, longer, do better than anyone else just to earn her right to live in this world and at a marginal level of peace and comfort finds a easy soil in which to seed in work. But unlike putting self-loathing issues in say, alcoholism, when you put them in workaholism, people — including yourself — applaud you for your drive, for your perfectionism, for your excellence, even if what’s driving all of that isn’t exactly functional or healthy. They don’t tell you to go to a meeting or put down the bottle: there’s nearly nada in the protestant work ethic and our cultural absorption of that propaganda that tells us to put the brakes on and get a fucking grip.
I may well be the equivalent of those people (who I think are totally insane: those mountain climbing stories creep me right the hell out and keep me awake at night) that climb Everest. Pretty much everyone thinks they’re completely cracked, but at the same time, they’ll cheer them on when they try, when they abandon everything to try, and celebrate them when they get to the top of that mountain, even if they lost a leg or froze near to death in the process.
Will I still reshoot if she wants to? Oh, of course I will. Will I still sit here every day and juggle several Herculean tasks because even just one isn’t enough? Oh yeah.
I’m not one for New Year resolutions, but I think I’d best make an exception this time round and accept that while it’s fine to work hard and aim high, and it’s even fine to enjoy working and feel validated in doing good work, it’s really ridiculous to take it to such extremes that your Sherpa is quitting his gig and heading to work for corporate America because he can’t ethically live with himself anymore in helping crazy bastards like you.
P.S. A word to the wise during cold season: when you think that your thoughtful sweetheart — who, like you, has a cold right now — has left a chewable Vitamic C tablet on your desk for you before he left for work? Email him and ask if that’s what it is first.
Because when you unknowingly pop one of those Airborne fizzy-tablets, the sort meant to fill a whole glass of water, into your mouth and chomp into it, not only does it taste like such ass you will nearly vomit, you will also have grapefruit-flavored foam pouring out of your mouth like a rabid dog for several minutes, which is more than a little unsettling. Trying to make the fizz stop with a slug of your nearby coffee is also not the brightest of ideas nor a fine flavor combination.
December 18th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
Heather:
(hello to you, too! )
A comment from your latest post reminded me of that discussion earlier regarding why girls say yes before they’re ready/don’t say no when they want to/etc:
“The part of me that often still believes she’s just not good enough for anything, and that she has to work harder, longer, do better than anyone else just to earn her right to live in this world and at a marginal level of peace and comfort finds a easy soil in which to seed in work. ”
Why do you think we do this to ourselves? Have you got any answers? I’m wondering, too, if Lioness has thought about this and come up with any conclusions. It just feels to me like this is our motivation for everything we as women do sometimes–it’s an effort to earn favor, to be deserving of all we have, to gain the respect of the people we live and work with by diminishing our selves and our contributions. I recognize that I put myself last in line in so many respects. In my professional position, I see clearly on a daily basis the way men use styles that women wouldn’t consider using to do the same job. I see women concede their power to men to make peace or because they feel they haven’t got as much experience, when in fact, the exact opposite may be true. If women don’t concede their power, there are so many names that are used to describe them. “Bitch”, “shrew”, “nag”, and so many others come to mind. In my home, I see the ways that I step away from conflict or accept the words of my spouse as gospel, when in fact, they are nothing more than mere opinion. And I wonder: are we programmed from birth? Or is this something cultivated by the society we live in? And how do we teach our daughters NOT to be this way?
It’s at least worth pondering….
December 18th, 2006 at 6:18 pm
Oops. And now I see that I missed an earlier post in which you discussed this related to porn. But what about when it’s not? Does that change the dynamic any, or is it still the same? And perhaps it’s too broad to ask the question regarding whether this is cultivated by the society we live in. Maybe I should have narrowed the question more to something like, “Is this something we can overcome in the society we live in?” I have two little boys, and I wonder daily how I can teach them to grow up to be good, responsible, feminist men that care about society as a whole and not just their place in it. I think answering the question I’ve asked (if it’s even possible) will answer, in large part, the question about how to teach my sons to be good citizens of our world.
December 19th, 2006 at 11:12 am
Well, for myself I know that a lot of it comes from both covert and very direct, overt messages that this is exactly the case: that I am lesser than other people, that I do have to “earn” these things, etc. Certainly, I also got some messages/treatment that made clear that was NOT the case, but I think the negatives overrode the positives. Not enough that I’m not aware of what this is, and that it’s not sensible, but enough that it’s all still in there and I operate under these things a lot sometimes.
I got the worst kind of those messages very strongly during very formative years: essentially, I came of age feeling like/having it presented to me that being smart and talented was my saving grace, and if I didn’t work those things like crazy, I was pretty darn worthless.
In my case, too, I think it’s the opposite of condeding power to men, at large or interpersonally, because in my formative stuff, sparing one strong exception (my father) a little vulnerability or giving-over all too often meant being exploited.