Avoiding the Curse of Familiarity
[by Colleen Wainwright]
We’re broken records, all of us who attended any one (or, if we were really lucky, all three) of the Strictly Business 3 conferences.
“It was so inspiring!” and “I came away with so many new ideas and new friends, my head is exploding!” and “Boy, I’m bad at remembering names!”
Okay – so maybe that last one was just me. I am eternally grateful for name tags.
To paraphrase Gail Mooney in her terrific SB3 takeaway, it’s difficult to settle on a single “a-ha!” moment when the entire three-day period is a nonstop festival of firing synapses.
And yet there was one moment among that sea of many that did stand out for me, and it happened in Gail’s own (excellent) workshop on Shooting Video with the HDSLR Cameras. Gail, who comes from a still photography background, described her realization that shooting video was fundamentally different from shooting stills – that it was about “shooting time in motion, not moments in time. Finally “getting” that this was a different medium, with its own best practices for capturing stories, Gail loosened up, let it roll, and had a ball. (The agony of trimming came later, in the editing suite.)
That one line helped free her from the “curse of familiarity” - that stuff we can no longer see because we’re too darned close to it. It also helped jolt me out of my own Stop 3, Day 3 torpor. This is why I keep coming out to meet people whose interests overlap my own: because talking about these common areas of interest helps bring my own thoughts into sharper focus; because seeing things through a different lens, I am freed from the curse of familiarity. (Similarly, whenever I teach the stuff that has for me become old hat, I discover new and vital things about it – one reason I revise my presentation after each time I give it.)
You have such a rich, amazing organization in ASMP – all of these interested, interesting people, sharing information. Avail yourself of it every chance you get: here, on Facebook, at chapter meetings.
And definitely at Strictly Business 4. Where I hope to have another explosion of synaptic deliciousness.
SB3 Keynote speaker, Colleen Wainwright, helps small creative businesses gather raving fans through better content strategy. communicatrix.com
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[...] moment for Strictly Business, the ASMP blog in an uncharacteristically brief essay called “Avoiding the Curse of Familiarity.” How I lived this long without ever hearing that phrase is mystery enough, but the real [...]
Exactly!
(Sometimes it’s creepy that Colleen can say so well, and in such an engaging way, what would take me 300 paragraphs full of unfinished sentences).
[...] I also began blogging for my wonderful friends and clients at the ASMP. Only a couple of posts so far, but writing for photographers, like writing for actors or designers, is a [...]