It is very sad to see when a player from the Dutch women hockey team gets injured during the first training at the Olympics. Knee injury, over. All the training, commitment and sacrifices for nothing. At that moment there is not only physical pain, there is also a lot of emotional pain. The world seems to end at that very moment.
Is there a way to compare this situation with any situation in photography? There are no Olympic medals in photography, but there is also a lot of commitment, sacrifices and work done to create great images. And there are also moments of great pain, when all the efforts seem to fall into nothing. Finally being on the Galapagos Islands, these incredible animals eventually right in front of you and the camera is not working, broken. At that moment not only the camera is broken, but also the photographer. What to do now?
Allow the pain to be there, give it space and a moment to be. If you don’t, it will push through when you don’t want it to. By giving it a moment it will disappear quickly and you will have all your energy to borrow a camera from another photographer, put in your memory card, take some shots and explore the opportunities to repair or replace your own camera.
Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com
