Image via Wikipedia

I’ve recently been working on a photo of a Japanese temple guardian that was taken at Narita. Quick travel tip – if you do to Japan don’t just use Narita as an airport. It is a charming town with a wonderful complex of temples.

Now back to the point.

What I wanted to do was make the Guardian become unnaturally in your face without looking .. well wrong.  After my first run at the editing I wasn’t convinced by the picture. There areas that were too bright and blown out, and possibly evidence of over sharpening.

At this point I put down the picture and saved it for future reference. There comes a point in editing, be it an image or an article that you no longer see what you have done. Everything sort of blurs together and it kind of feels just good or bad. When this happens I always recommend walking away and coming back afresh sometime later.

However this time when I came back and wasn’t quite so sure about the picture. The technical questions were still there and now I wondered if this was a worthwhile endeavour. Normally  when i create something I do it for myself in the hope that someone else likes it. This is I believe artistically wise. Not so sure if its commercially a great idea as my tastes may not be that commercial. Normally I live with this and things go ok. This I started to worry if what I was doing was mightily disconnected from what people want. After all if people have no chance of liking what I produce why produce. It was a moment of self doubt.

Then I remembered this – its the reason why many people do not progress artistically. It is the self doubt that prevents action.

What do I do?

Work on something I feel better about and go back to the temple guardian at some point in the future. I might even post it on Facebook and see if a discussion ensues. You mustn’t let self doubt stop you. You must just keep on at it.