5 Tips To Boost Your Photography Confidence
Attaining a strong photography following on Facebook or Instagram is a significant achievement, but it can be a Catch-22. On the one hand, you’ve got a load of people to share your work with. On the other hand, all of those people have opinions.
Ordinarily, they share those opinions with a “like” or a “love”. It’s not often that an Insta follower will go out of their way to scold your latest photo in a ruthless DM. But the number of likes or loves that our photographs get can become a bit of an obsession.
It can even kill our confidence. After all, if you’ve put a lot of effort into a recent photography excursion, only to get less likes than some haphazard photos you took a few days before, you can start to wonder where it’s all gone wrong.
But if you want to continue enjoying photography – and social media as an output – you have to put those feelings behind you and work on building your confidence. With this in mind, here are five tips that can help to boost your photography confidence today and into the future.
Make Photo Books For You
Firstly, you should remember that social media isn’t your only output. One of the best ways to celebrate your photography achievements is by putting them into a photo book. This can exist solely for you, and it can sit neatly on your shelf to serve as a reminder of all your best moments.
You can even add some themes to them, whether that be a vacation portfolio, a winter collection, or even just photographs of your favorite pet. They don’t have to be anything unique or meaningful, just a collection of pictures that you’re happy with. You can create a photo book in 2 clicks, so get started today and start building a portfolio that’s just for you.
Ask Yourself “Why?”
If you’re getting caught up in Instagram or Facebook likes, asking yourself why is a good way to get over it. What’s making you care about what other people think? Why is someone clicking the “like” button so important to you? Often, the answer is pretty simple.
We photographers love feeling part of a community. We don’t so much care about garnering likes but feeling a part of a community underneath all those likes. In this case, you should look at joining offline or online photography groups, or even sharing more with your own circle of friends, rather than putting all your eggs into the social media basket.
Give Yourself A Photography Vacation
We don’t mean actually go on a vacation – although there’s a number of reasons why photography vacations are necessary! We just mean that you should put the camera down for a while. Instead of photographing something every day, simply live in the moment and refrain from snapping anything – even if you know it would make the perfect picture!
Sound difficult? That’s because it is! But if you take a step back from photography for a bit, you’ll realise that you miss the actual act of photographing, not the Instagram attention that comes afterwards. This is the first step to building your confidence and realising what is truly important: your own hobby and your own happiness.
Find Your Confidence In Other Areas
Another good way to boost your confidence doesn’t actually involve photography at all. Instead, you should try to focus on other areas of your life. Have you stopped going to the gym? Have you dropped another hobby in favor of your photography ambitions?
Get back into them and you will find that confidence actually spills over from one area of life into the other. If you can gain confidence through alternative progress, this will find its way into your photography and help you feel more self-assured and happy with your work.
Trust Your Vision
Lastly, it would help if you remembered that photography isn’t about Instagram or Facebook. One of the reasons we suggest uploading your photographs to a photo book maker is because, just by doing so, you will start to see your photography in a different light, outside of the social media bubble.
This is the same light you saw your photography in when you first started – without any outside noise or opinions. When it’s just you and your photography, there’s no reason to lose your confidence, as the only person you are trying to impress is yourself. If you are happy with the pictures you’re taking, and you enjoy the act of taking them, then there’s really nothing else to it!
