My buddy Shaun (Shameless plug: owner of Inclind the Delaware web design company, that customized my badass wedding photography website) showed me this video. When I clicked play, I got excited for this challenge before me. I sat up straight, my eyes widened, my ears perked up and I blocked out everything around me. Quickly my entrepreneurial blood started pumping throughout my veins.
“How many passed does the team in white make?” Easy. My first instinct was to quickly study the team in white. A brief glance told me that the white team had 4 people of various sizes. The passing started and I deduced the easiest way to count was to lock my eyes on the basketball. Similar to locking onto one blade of a ceiling fan to follow the rotation. At this point I was wathcing the ball and not the individual players on the team in white. 2…3…4….5…I counted. At the end my guess was 12. I must have missed the first pass during my mental scramble at the very beginning.
WATCH THE VIDEO BEFORE READING THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE!!!
Did you see the moonwalking bear?” I laughed. Not because of the possibility that I missed the moonwalking bear. I laughed because of the mental image that my brain manifested of a….MOONWALKING BEAR!
“Noooooo!” I say. Shaun replies, “Watch the replay.” The video rewinds before my eyes and I tried to sneak a glance of this moonwalking bear. Well come to find out…there he was. That damn bear would have made MJ roll around in his grave! (Sorry was that too soon??
The lesson here: If you dedicated all your efforts into one thing and block out everything else…you might miss the moonwalking bear! ;)
As a photographer are you spending too much time editing pictures and missing out on other opportunities? Are you too busy watching every little “pass” and missing the whole “game?” Are you working more IN your business and less ON your business?
What are your thoughts? How aware are you in YOUR photography business?
~Rob
The funny thing is that I read this before watching the video. So knowing that there was a moonwalking bear, I tried to count the passes and still see the bear. I got the passes right and still missed the bear!
Relating that back to what you said about photography, I think we should focus on achieving one goal at a time and if another opportunity clearly (come on that bear was pitch black and the shot was dimly lit, haha) presents itself, sometimes it is best to let ourselves get distracted.
I’ve seen this video a few years and never thought of it this way. It’s a very refreshing analogy! I feel the same way. It’s so easy to just look so close that you just might miss the elephant, especially in this digital day and age where the content is mostly what we work on. It’s very important to stand back and look at the whole canvas every now and then. I personally live on lists and try to schedule all the pieces of the puzzle, be it marketing, research, general art direction, client communications or just pixels in photoshop. To everyone out there, my advice is plan ahead, set attainable goals and make time for yourself as to a lot of people out there the line between work and home is nonexistent.
Thanks for the post!