Imposter Syndrome, Meet Your Camera

A friend told me her dream is to shoot for National Geographic, but she doesn’t think she has it in her, and that hit close to home. In this kickoff episode, I share how I walked away from creativity for years, what pulled me back in, and the simple challenge I want you to do today: take photos for you, with whatever camera you already have.

Show Notes:
00:00 The NatGeo Dream
01:20 Start Anyway
02:53 My Origin Story
04:59 Getting Back Into It
07:42 Start Simple Today
08:23 Old Camera, Big Feeling
13:02 Your Turn
14:05 End

Produced by:
124 Productions

Transcript

0:00

Welcome everybody to the first ever Dave Grenier Podcast where we talk about everything photography. Today we're talking about chasing your dreams as a photographer. This episode is inspired by a conversation that I had with a very dear friend of mine who told me a few months ago that she wants to be, literally her dream, is to be a National Geographic photographer. But she doesn't think she has it in her. It's one of those things where she's not a photographer right now. She does a very different job. It's kind of a marketing kind of thing and very technical. She's an amazingly intelligent, wonderful, pure person. And honestly, I've seen her photos. She is absolutely amazing. She blows me away. I've done I, I don't know how many photos I've taken over 60...80,000. Whatever's in my Lightroom catalog. And it's insane. And she comes out with these amazing photos that I'm jealous of legitimately. Emily, I know you're listening. I'm jealous of some of those photos that you've taken down in Africa. They're absolutely incredible. I wanted to talk about this because she is not the only person that has this imposter syndrome of like, Oh, I'd love to do that, but I could never do that. How many of you have actually thought that or said that it might not even be about photography, it might be about writing. Maybe you wanted to write a book, but you're like, “Oh, that's for somebody else. I could never do that.” Yes, you can. Yes, you can. And the beauty about photography is that it's so simple to get started. You can take your phone out of your pocket and take a photo, and you can be a professional level photo. I have taken professional gigs using my using my iPhone, and usually I'll have my other bigger camera on me, my more professional level camera. But I have I have a very capable iPhone 13 Pro Max is a wonderful set of cameras on it, but you don't even need that. You just need it's not about the equipment that you have. Yes, that absolutely helps you out in a lot of different scenarios. But it's about what you can do with the equipment. Right. So it's it's not about the camera. It's about the photographer. And I know that this podcast is geared towards the beginner, geared towards hopefully getting you to step off that ledge and just get going. It really is super simple. Let me tell you a story about myself. Some of you may know this If you've been watching my YouTube channel, you may have already seen this or heard me talk about this, but it's when I was 13 years old, I took to taking film photos with my brother, who was almost six years older than me, and I idolized him like a younger brother does to an older brother. He was the coolest guy in the world and he was in college and he was learning how to use a dark room. And we he would you know, he showed me with his 35 millimeter, he had a Minolta that he got from my dad. And we would walk around Boston and it man, that was such a great time just hanging out with my brother. We'd take the Red Line into into Boston. We'd pop on out, we'd walk Boston and just find photos. It was just like, you know, you're walking down the street and all of a sudden you see something down an alley and you're like, “Hey, that's that's a cool piece of artwork” or “That's a cool pigeon”, right? You know, it was the most amazing time in my creative life. I wanted to do photography right? And like a lot of kids and a lot of I was adolescents. Like I said, I was 13 years old, but like a lot of a lot of kids, you want to do something creative, you know, you want to be an artist. You want to, you know, maybe you want to be a ballerina or something. But at some point, adulthood hits, Somebody tells you, you can't do that kid that's not going to make you any money. You got to be a lawyer, doctor, whatever. And those are amazing, wonderful things. I'm not begrudging people that are lawyers or doctors or whatever it is, but at some point along the way, we give up on being creative and it really breaks my heart. And I'm going to tell you personally, I gave up on it, right? And there was,“Hey, kid, there's no money in that. You got to do something else.” So I became a technical person. I was I went to school for electronics. I went to a trade school. I don't regret any of that. But fast forward over 20 years later and I was in my thirties when I stumbled upon, like many of you probably have, Peter McKinnon, right. I mean, he's the he's kind of he's the goat when it comes to YouTube photography back in, I don't remember the late, late 2000s. Right? We're in 2023 right now, but probably close to ten years ago. Maybe it was during his meteoric rise. Right. So I ended up starting to flex that creative muscle again. Got a T7i, a Canon T7i. I bought one of those guys after my wife, amazingly got me a Sony Alpha 100, which is the first Sony camera. There was a digital camera. It was in 35 millimeter, you know, film. And oh, man, she just she brought that spark back out and it just was amazing. So then we got I got the T7i and I started going crazy and I started doing YouTube. Very Peter McKinnon esque. My early videos, you can definitely see I try to do the slow mo and you know, I was even sharing my coffee experience a little bit, you know, But it was super cool. But anyway, that, that kind of like dipping my toe in just to do it because I liked it, that actually got me my current 9 to 5 job that I work. And in that job I am the lead of the photography department and I do a lot of a lot of impressive photography. I think it's impressive. I can't believe that I get to do it, you know, for some big names, right? Some big companies. And I love it, honestly. I work remotely for the most part now, and I don't get out in the field as much as I would have liked, as much as I would like. But man, is it amazing? Do you feel absolutely incredible? And it's not work when you get to work on sites that most people don't get to because they're not open to the public yet and you're taking these cool kind of intimate photos. There's nothing like it. If you like being a photographer, if you like the idea of being a photographer it's absolutely it's intoxicating. It is absolutely amazing. And when you hear somebody else, especially a dear friend of yours, that says, “Oh, yeah, I'd love to be a photographer, my ears perked up, right?” Like, come on. Yeah, let's do this. Let's do this right. I can help you with that. You know, ISO, aperture, whatever. That doesn't matter. You learn it, but it's easy to learn. You can start off in auto. You can start off with your phone. Just. Just take a photo. You don't even have to share it. Just take photos. I don't know how many photos I've taken and I haven't shared. I just love the act of taking the photos and I know there's a lot of you out there that are just like that. There's something intimate about the act of taking photos and nothing comes of it. It's super powerful, absolutely super powerful. If you have not taken your photos and then printed them. God, there's there's nothing quite like taking this amazing photo where you see something and you get that moment like, I have this, I have this photo of a gorilla who was at the San Diego Zoo, and he is just standing in such a way. There's a couple photos with gorillas. I love gorillas. That's kind of my thing. And there's one where he's looking and he's he's kind of looking off to the side. And then he turns, I'm taking photos and this is my my Alpha 100. I'm my Alpha series, Sony Alpha Series 100, and it's with the telephoto zoom. I think it was the 100 to 300 millimeters. That's the, for those that don't know, that's the you know you can it's kind of long it's like ten inches, 12 inches long and you can telescope it in and out. As soon as that gorilla turned and looked at me, oh, my God, I died. It was it was kind of like that scene from Austin Powers is that “you're a tiger!” Like, oh, man like, it was so exciting. It was invigorating. I could not believe that I got that shot. And it was just there was nothing overly special. But I'm just built that way as photographers are built that way to just kind of get lost in it. And that along with there's another gorilla photo from there, there's that was just man, he's just standing there. I have it as my screen background a lot of times. He's just standing there. He's just calmly powerful. And those photos, those photos were taken with the Alpha 100, the Sony Alpha 100, which is like, I think a ten megapixel and ten megabyte sorry, ten megapixel camera, nothing super fancy by today's standards. And the sensor on it was a crop sensor. Nothing wrong with those. Those are amazing and awesome. But my point is some of my favorite photos, my absolute favorite photos were with that old camera. Older camera and a you know, like that was before I became a professional photographer. I was just doing it because I liked it. I did it. I, I, I wasn't showing anybody the photos except for my wife. Started doing some fun stuff, you know, kind of like these photo challenges with her because she likes photography to not to the level that I do, but she's a very capable photographer, you know, like she doesn't geek out over the different settings and, you know, the millimeters of the lenses and the focal lengths, which is the same thing, you know, and the ISO and the the apertures and oh, that's an F 1.4.“Oh, my gosh, there's so much light.” You know, she doesn't get into that. But those who know, know. And you just go down this rabbit hole. But anyway, so this is to talk about it's kind of a long story to get to a short point that I never thought that I'd be where I am today. I always saw myself as well. I shouldn't say always, but after, like, I don't know, 14, 15, when when reality was smacked into me or pushed into me where they said, “you can't do you how are you going to make any money, kid?” You know, being a photographer. Yeah, I wish. I wish I could tell that kid, Dude, it's going to be all right. Like, pursue it. I wouldn't have. I wouldn't be where I am now if I had pursued it, You know, maybe I wouldn't have moved across the country and gotten that that experience over in California that that I have now. So, guys, chase your dreams, okay? Like, honestly, being a photographer is so easy. Really so easy. Now, I. I know getting the gigs, that's the hard part, but taking the photos is the easiest thing in the world. You can start with shooting in auto and just, just go from there. The rest watch my channel. Okay? So I'm, I'm trying to, or listening to this podcast, I'm trying to kind of gear this towards the beginner. I actually have a kind of like a, a “How to Shoot for Manual Photography”, which by the way, is where I was using the hand cheetah, if you happen to see that one, that was for Emily. So that was inspired by her also because, you know, a lot of us have these same hang ups, a lot of these these same issues when we're trying to get started. So I want you to challenge yourself to just go out and take photos. You don't have to do it for anybody else. You don't have to share them with anybody else. Just go out and take some photos. And then I'd also like for you to if you're on YouTube here and you're watching this, then go ahead and in the comments below, tell us about your experiences with photography. Good, bad, indifferent, maybe give some kudos to people. Actually, selfishly, I'm going to ask that you give some kudos to Emily. I'm trying to give her a couple nudges and pokes to get going here because I know once she gets going, man, she's just going to set the world on fire, honestly. And you know what? Maybe I'm going to see if I can get her on the podcast in a little bit. She's going to be so embarrassed that I've mentioned her and I've kind of put a lot of emphasis on her in this thing. But on this, gawd man, she is she's not the only one that has this story. I had it. My wife has had it. Not with with photography but being creative. It just so many people, so many people run into this and I want to help kind of break down that barrier. So go in the comments, share your stories. Even if you don't, just take some photos for yourself. And until next time, be good to each other.