Delayed gratification in the “insta” world.
Seeking immediate reinforcement vs letting your work mature.
Pressing a shutter button and checking the backscreen for a result. Uploading to Lightroom using Wi-Fi to edit on the go. Posting to Instagram to get an immediate response. From start to finish, maybe less than five minutes. This is the way the world of photography and photographer’s workflow changed over the past years. No, this is not a discussion on digital vs film, neither it’s a ramble on how regular posting to social media has taken away the comfort of time. It’s not a complaint towards a never-ending hustle of “content creation”, degradation of artistic quality, nor democratization of photography as such.
It’s about how going against the flow and fighting the urge helps define the creative vision, build resistance, emotional strength and in the end, improve the quality of one’s art.
Delayed gratification is the resistance to the temptation of immediate pleasure. It’s a choice. Do something now and get an immediate albeit smaller reward, or wait till later to enjoy the spoils more? So what are the joys of delayed gratification in photography?
Letting the images sink in
While making a photograph, processing it, and receiving immediate feedback is so tempting, try to hold off posting and let the images sit on your hard drive for a few days, weeks, months even. Once returned to, you will have changed and so will your perspective on your work.
Waiting a certain amount of time will give you perspective and the ability to value and judge frame quality without the emotional connection driven by recency. You’ll be better equipped to self-curate and select your images for display.
Finding joy in not knowing
Delaying gratification does not necessarily mean locking your images away on a hard drive for the next 12 months. You might also practice it by being more present, more in the moment, during a photoshoot.
Modern image-making devices nudge us to constantly check and re-iterate our process, settings, and composition. We are subconsciously pushed towards achieving visual brilliance, compositional perfection, and masterful focus. This is all nice and fine, however, if we put too much effort and focus on the technical aspects, we forget about the artistic side of things. We lose connection with the moment, our subjects, or the environment. The camera becomes more important than what’s in front of it. Don’t let that happen.
Set in your exposure, know where and how your camera focuses best, and then shoot. Work the scene, talk to your subject, take in the landscape, observe the light and make sure the camera does not stand in between you, the photographer, and the photograph in the making.
Have fun with the film
Don’t have that much self-control? Checking the back screen still and fumbling with the settings? Try analog. Film photography, by its nature, delays the gratification by at least a few days, until after your scanned film comes back in form of photographs.
Even this small window may give you a new perspective, a different outlook, which in turn will influence the way you edit the image, how you caption it, what you’ll write about it, where you’ll share it and if you post it at all.
Do a long term project
Finding a passion for a specific subject and working on a long-term project often times brings tremendous results. Long-term projects — spanning months, or years, are the holy grail of delayed gratification. The patience, perseverance, and commitment it takes are huge, but so is the reward. It’s like growing a bonsai tree from the seed. It needs to grow for at least a few years till you can shape it. With long-term photography projects, it can be the same.
In the end, delaying gratification helps more than just your photography. Studies have shown that people with better skills in delaying gratification are in general more successful, their careers, relationships, health, and finances thrive too!
One other thing: Don’t mistake delaying gratification with off-putting things till tomorrow, just as well as — and this is one of the principles I myself live by — sometimes done is better than perfect!
Thanks for reading.
