Recently I came across a quote “it is not the water surrounding the ship that sinks the ship in, it is the water that is let into the ship.” Here I can only assume that the anonymous author is comparing ship to be oneself, and the water being all the troubles that are around us.
As I was pondering on this deep quote, I also began to wonder if there are differences between how the “water” is managed, or if the water is water, after all. The reason for this apprehension was another quote from a protagonist in a rom-com I watched a while ago, who compares the past as being either a baggage or a ballast.
It is common knowledge that a ballast provides the (lateral) stability to a naval vessel, and baggage is a metaphorical reference to a ball and chain that drags you down.
The ballast is a controlled method of letting water (your troubles) in to provide stability or in my case, perhaps a better perspective. Furthermore, it may even offer an opportunity to learn from those troubles to better a) deal with them in present time and b) have a better handle on things in case of a recurrence in the future.
But then, if it is a baggage and I let the water in without control, I am doomed. Ship will sink, faster or slower based on how I chaos in, or the hole gets bigger.
About a year ago, I went on a photo shoot with models organized by PPSCV (Professional Photographers of Santa Clara Valley) at a hundred-year-old school called Machado Historical school. These the photos taken at that time where I can say my skills had such gaping holes that my ship was close to sinking.
A year later, almost to the date I was on a second shoot at the same location but with different set of models. Quite a bit has changed in the year that passed, in terms of my skills, my self-confidence, my self-esteem and not the least my post processing flow. This time around, I was more at ease, and that made models feel at ease, and felt that they thought that I know what I was talking about, when I was asking them to pose. In contrast, year before, I would meekly approach them and ask them what they want, and I could recognize the lackadaisical response now. I did not know any better then. I was also trapped into thinking how “natural” the post processing ought be, rather than giving what the models are expecting. They needed photos for their portfolio and they needed to be more glamorous and with more pizzaz than I have been thinking is the right amount of processing.
You can judge from the below if my water has been in the ballast tank or baggage in the hold. I certainly felt it is more of a ballast than leaking water into the ship.
Epilogue: As the signature in my email says: ” “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at, change.” Never truer in my life at the present moment, and I will revisit the photos I took last year and see if I can breathe (more) life into them.
