The power of observation

The power of observation

The kind of event photography I enjoy doing is candids. When I work an event and after figuring out light and settings, I do a lot of observing. I watch people interact, usually selecting a small group to focus on, I see how they talk with or without gesturing, I frame the shot, and then I finally lift the camera. 

If I dig down, I imagine my tendency to first observe comes from assimilation (watching how people behaved, and probably also driving my social anxiety), introversion, retail service work, and marketing (catching tiny errors). I sometimes worry that clients will see me not using my camera and think I’m not working, when in fact, I’m doing all the work I listed above. But the reason I get the candids is because I don’t point my camera at people for so long that they notice or feel eyes on them. And the reason I say that I use my marketing eye is because I see when things are crooked, or logos aren’t facing forward.

It’s the same for conducting face-to-face interviews: lots of observing body language and reactions to see when to stop or dig further. And of course, no long stares that freak them out.

My pseudo die-on-the-hill belief—next to everyone should work a service job for at least six months—is that the world would be a better place if everyone had a touch of social anxiety in them. Imagine all the words and actions that could not be said or done had someone taken a moment to think about how they would be received.

It's a short one today! I've been waiting for an interview reply before I write the article I wanted to publish two (yes, two) months ago. I have once again overestimated my energy levels and underestimated the time it takes to work on this newsletter (did you know that the planning fallacy has an optimism bias of underestimating how long it takes to complete a future task?).

etc.

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