stress

How to Reduce Stress and Increase Creativity Before a Photo Shoot

Being a professional creative means that you don’t always (ever) have the luxury of waiting for inspiration to strike. It means you have to create your work, on demand, regardless of the circumstances. Building practices to help reduce your stress and increase your creativity before a photoshoot will make creativity less illusive.

Read This If You’ve Ever Been Scared Before a Photo Shoot

In the age of increased mental health awareness, it is important to address some mental health issues that photographers may have to cope with. For many, that is primarily anxiety. In this article, I will break down a few ways you can be less anxious before and during a shoot.

The Science of G.A.S.

People will do just about anything to alleviate their anxiety. During the last year of writing my doctoral thesis, the worry about being able to finish grew increasingly heavy. The relentless grind of research, constantly being told that your work is inadequate, and believing that 80-hour workweeks are average has its tolls on all students. Once you reach the edge of this process and are pulverized into oblivion, you get a nice, shiny PhD.

You may be wondering what got me through this. The answer? Buying a ton of camera equipment. To photographers, this type of retail therapy is known as gear acquisition syndrome. Someone with this syndrome impulsively buys cameras and related gear, amassing more camera gear than they can realistically use.

Curious Upside-Down Portraits Showing the Stress of Unemployment

Spanish photographer Marc Vicens wanted to capture the stress and pain of the ongoing economic crisis, so he found a bunch of unemployed people and asked them to hang upside-down for right-side-up portraits. His goal of the series, titled "Hanging," was to creatively portray the feeling of anxiety that dominates the daily life of these individuals.