I’m finding a huge amount of joy in the game piece photography project I’ve undertaken recently. In part, I think the satisfaction I’m experiencing is due to having low expectations on myself as a photographer.
As Twyla Tharp says in her book The Creative Habit, “inexperience erases fear. You do not know what is and is not possible and therefore everything is possible.”
Should I be shooting these on my phone? Is this lighting okay? It’s kind of out of focus, but I think it looks cool. So I share the photo on Instagram, and it gets out into the world before I have too much time to judge myself.
I’m going to try to bring this fearlessness back into my improv–an art form where I have more expectation on myself now that I’m a teacher and coach. With improv, a lot of people say they want to be able to “not think” but for me that translates to “not judge.”
I’m pretty good on stage about not letting self judgement get in the way of my performance. I’m grateful for the training that I have and know that I am a better performer for it, but sometimes I miss the joys of inexperience when I was fearless on stage because I didn’t know what to fear.
Sarah Zureick-Brown 