Seagulls and Guinness
Think of your hero. The person you aspire to be like. They may be alive or dead but to be favourably compared with them, you feel all sorts of positive emotions. If you see yourself as a great leader maybe Gandhi, Mandela or the New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. Or you’re a helper, a humanitarian. Then possibly Mother Teresa or Oskar Schindler.
The other day I was given a list of people supposedly with the same character traits as me. Interesting! Clint Eastwood. I like his acting – but am I like him? Fidel Castro. I definitely don’t smoke big cigars. Winston Churchill. Another cigar man. Saddam Hussein and Donald Trump. Ok, I really must be looking at the wrong list.
Well it seems not. Or at least not according to the result of the Enneagram personality test I had just undertaken. For those of you familiar with the Enneagram model, my primary Enneagram is Type 8 – the challenger. Apart from being like Clint Eastwood and Donald Trump, at their best, Type 8’s are empowering, generous, gentle, and inspiring. Unfortunately they can also be defiant, confrontational, and cynical. The good news is overall they are usually resourceful, independent, and pragmatic.
What has all this to do with a photography centred podcast and being creative? This is Episode 2 of PhotoStory, I’m Des Clark and thanks for joining me.
I was listening to another photography centered podcast the other night. Whilst the conversation was wide-ranging, one of the questions asked was “how do you become a better photographer?” The answer given, was, to know yourself better. The technical stuff will come, but you really need to know yourself to be able to see your voice, your emotions, and your message come through the photographs you take.
So as we’re talking photos here, rather than do a personality test, I have a question for you.
If you had to pick 3 photos that you took yourself that came close to defining the real you, do you know the images that you would choose? So you could give one of those photos to someone like the way you do with a business card and say, “that’s me”. If you think it’s impossible, try it out over a coffee. Or maybe make that a few coffees – or a bottle of wine. You get the idea – it’s not a 20-minute gig.
I did this exercise recently and came up with an initial 15. After a lot of humming and hawing, I eventually whittled them down to 3. One of them is the image for this podcast, but you can see all 3 on my blog posting. Of course things change over time. Like the way we either redesign our business card, or even move jobs, our 3 identifying photos will change. But for now, these are my 3.
Before I get on to talk about the one photo that you’ve seen as the promo image for this episode, last year I attended a course which looked at the way creatives market themselves. It made me ask some fundamental questions about myself! When I say the word “creatives”, I’m including anyone who makes anything to ultimately share with a larger audience - from a potter to a woodturner including artists, musicians, photographers, writers... One of the fears that creatives often have in making things is that it's personal because what you are making is really you. You reveal yourself in what you make and ultimately share with others. You accept criticism or even worse - ignorance. Ultimately fears about being a creative fall into two camps - fears about yourself and fear about your reception by others.
Whoever has been brave, or mad, or even both, to set up their own business in whatever field, will recognise the challenge of branding. Are you selling yourself or your brand? People will often buy your product because it's you they are buying from. Not the brand. Yet others have managed to create a brand and remain virtually anonymous throughout. Think e.g. of Banksy. His "product", his street art, can be recognised but he could be sitting right next to you on the train and remain unrecognised.
Whilst creatives can offer a service such as photographing your family, or the house you’re trying to sell, or a potter making a set of 6 handcrafted coffee mugs for you, it's the whole idea of revealing yourself through your chosen medium, that is the challenge - and fear - of many. One of the core questions asked early on in this marketing course was “what is your bigger story or idea behind what you do” and “what makes you different and what difference do you make”?
Even being niche, I still need to understand what is it that is really me? What is it that drives me? What are my core passions or subjects that I want to explore, address, share, educate and connect with others on?
Those initial 15 images that I eventually whittled down to 3 were primarily on themes like adventure, dream fulfilment, scenery, high places, nature, wilderness. But there were also other important themes running through them like social justice, working conditions in low-income countries, and trauma due to fighting and conflict. I suppose looking at my career “path”, that’s an easy understand.
But rather than a work history photoshoot, it’s those images that reveal who you are, how you think, what motivates you, what you dream of, that I’m talking about.
As I said earlier, all 3 images are on the blog posting, but I’m going to talk about this one image that, for me, encompasses so much of what I have, think, and do. The photo itself is really no more than a quick shot of some stunning scenery. The Blasket Islands as seen from the south-western Irish Dingle peninsula.
In terms of background of the photo, having had a cancelled St Patrick’s day for two years running due to Covid, 2022 promised the first 17th March public festivities in 3 years. And for me, I couldn’t remember when last I was in Ireland for Patrick’s Day. A decade for sure. Maybe even 2 decades. And so, once Ireland started opening up their travel restrictions in January and February of 2022, I got a seat on an Aer Lingus flight Amsterdam to Cork for a long weekend. A few hours’ drive in a hired car saw me arrive in a small hostel west of Dingle on, what’s aptly called, the Wild Atlantic Way by the Irish Tourist Board. Except it wasn’t that wild really. It was wall to wall sunshine for the 3 days I was there. Windy enough for some good waves and minding your car door didn’t swing open, but there were also times of calm and quiet. Except that is in the bars, thronging with people, music and craic! Being able to drive around the area in such amazing conditions, where the light was stunning, made it difficult not to just stop and stay for hours taking photos.
But as this photo itself. I see those two gulls in me. Well I’m one of them. The other could be my partner, or another close friend. Close but independent. The main thing is that these gulls are sitting comfortably, for the time being, looking out at some amazing wild scenery, near enough to fly to but still a challenge, especially in high winds. They know that their siblings, even possibly their parents are still over there on the islands, but they’ve moved home. Close enough to where they started but not crazy like their cousins in Patagonia. These gulls love moving around exploring. Soaring the winds when they’re there but able to chillax as well. They enjoy the wilds so they’re not sparrows, but they’re not into the ultimate extremes like the ocean-going Albatross. They know there’s potential danger close-by (like me when I took the photo) but they’re staying put for the moment. In other words, they’ve done their quick risk analysis and weighed up likelihood and consequence. Some may think they have a high-risk tolerance but they really know, when push comes to shove, all they have to do is fly away. Those of who you know me will see me in all this. Others who don’t, and maybe you’re one of them, will get to know me this way.
Of course, whether all this reflects an Enneagram Type 8, I’ll leave to the psycho-analysts. All I know is that it’s a business card I could quite happily give to anyone right now.
And the other 2 photos? Will I’m Irish and I love Guinness. But like Guinness, I’ve left my hometown of Dublin and whilst not as well travelled as Guinness, I’ve seen a lot of the world. But what does it mean to be Irish? That’s a discussion over a bottle of Whiskey, not wine!
And crashing waves? I’ll leave that one for you to figure out. But think of arriving, when to break out, how to do it, what others see when you arrive after a long travel, where you started and where you’re from.
Thanks’ so much for joining me today. If you think this podcast will be something that you want to listen to again, I’d be really grateful if you'd consider sharing it with others. And if something that I said resonated with you – or you disagreed with – you can either leave a comment in the corresponding Blog post, or email photostory@desclark.photos Thanks again for listening and see you next time.
Music by Denys Kyshchuk from Pixabay
