The problem is, as I speed-browse through umpteen galleries and read pages of philosophical musings, without any good reason I quickly create a mental pecking order, with me at the bottom with all of my anonymous peers looking scathingly down up on me. Why is it that we all too often assess someone else’s work as being superior to our own? I don’t know, and I don’t profess to have an answer. That said, my bet is it has something to do with self belief, self esteem and self confidence, the not-so-holy trinity of success! In my experience the decline into self denigration can be swift and crippling if you lack any one of these three selfs. No one has ever said that my photographs are rubbish (although a few have probably thought as much) so any uncertainty surrounding my ability to create a good photograph must come from my own misgivings! I am my own worst enemy, it’s self-inflicted. So the road to ‘recovery’, if that’s what it is, has nothing to do with producing better quality work, but everything to do with becoming less self-critical and increasing my self-efficacy, learning to like myself.
Perhaps one way of doing this is to take heed of the more objective opinions of others, and be more attentive to what they say, rather than favouring the unforgiving scrutiny of my own subjective judgement. Not surprisingly, I suppose I’ve always known that both the problem and the solution are down to me![/fusion_text]