Doubt

Doubt creeps into photography everywhere, from thinking that you won't find anything today, to pessimism over the weather, to thoughts about the quality and volume of your photographs, to how you think others will perceive our work. Doubt can literally keep us home when we should be out shooting, or giving up, just before the sun finally breaks through and highlights the subject.

Doubt makes us abandon working on an image. It keeps us from showing our work to someone else, afraid it won't be good enough.

Doubt in fact causes a hell of a lot of damage. I suppose there are a few positive things you can say about doubt - if you don't ask, you won't be put down, and if you doubt that there's anything worth photographing, you might be right, but look at the cost.

How many times have you set off in less than ideal light, with no prospects of it improving, only to find clouds blow in or you find a ravine in shade so it doesn't matter that there are no clouds, or the high sun works for the image.

If the answer to the above question is never, then I suspect you don't get out enough. Some of this comes down to luck but if you don't go out at all, you will never be lucky, so the fellow who is prepared to be lucky is the one taking home the great images.

If you genuinely think your images aren't very good, well, you're probably right, and you have work to do - the worse the images, the easier it is to make big strides in quality. If on the other hand you compare your images to well known photographers and feel they hold up, but are simply afraid that you might get rejected, well, the sooner you put those doubts behind you and go for it.

If you are good and fear you aren't, testing the waters by submitting your work or showing it at a workshop is a great idea. If you think your work is good, and it isn't, because you haven't yet learned about the ways in which it could be better, well, that needs found out too, and the sooner you get it over, the sooner you can start improving.