For those of you who don’t know me, I cycle to and from work every day (well… almost every day). Today as I was cycling home I was just exhausted. I had worked a half-day over the weekend, not gotten much sleep last night, and had to go in an hour early today, so I was just pretty drained. I had been cycling the past several miles with lagging energy and sore muscles, slowly shifting to lighter and lighter gears to try and keep momentum.
In short I was lagging badly.
Then suddenly this cyclist whips by me at a good clip. I had passed her on the side of the path as she was chilling a few miles back, and she was chugging along.
I’m a fairly competitive guy, and I make it a personal goal to at least keep pace with people in front of me. I push and push till I just can’t do it anymore, and I thought “I’ve got it in me to go a ways at her pace”, so I switched my grip to the lower bars (I’ve got the “ram’s horn” style of street bike handles where you’ve got several options of grip) and started chugging along. After a fairly short amount of time I had caught up to her and was keeping pace with her quite handily.
Two minutes ago I could barely keep the slow pace I was going and now I was hauling tail and not even feeling it. Why? Because I had someone to push me.
And it’s the same way with photography. Reading blogs and taking classes and reading books is all well and good, but sometimes I need someone to come along and just fly by me to get me jazzed up and motivated. That’s why I love going to photo meetups or doing organized photostrolls. I get to see first-hand the work people are doing and how fast they’re flying past me, and it pushes me to be more creative. Not to be better than them, but to keep up. You see, I’m not competing with them. I’m competing against myself. They’re just the thing that gets me off my butt and gives me a target to shoot for.
So get out there and find someone. A friend, a Meetup group, a student, whatever. Just go out and find someone to shoot with. Someone who will push you to be better than you are.