I have invested so much time and effort in photography and I have gotten so much compliments, but it takes just 1 client that does not praise my work or God forbid has a small complaint or just to see 1 photographer in my area which has like ultra cool photographs and blows my work away to just doubt my life choices. Is it only me? And if no, how do you handle it?
Its really not just you...every creative doubts themselves..thats just the nature of the job.Things do get better with experience and you can eventually push out the doubts in your mind. Using golf as an example....when a golf swing doesn't feel right and you are not making the cut......get back practicing and get back to basics and I think the same applies to photography...get faith back in your fundamentals and get back out there.
You can only compare yourself to another up to a certain point - anything beyond that and it becomes detrimental to your self-esteem or you feel you're "better than" - neither of which is considered a "best practice" - there are too many of these types of wannabes out there - do not succumb to such fallacy. Show up ready to work-for-it every day and do the best you can. If you're working [for a Corp. or other Co.-driven / directed] project - strive to do several personal projects as well based upon a theme of your choosing (or perhaps inspired by another whose work you recently compared yourself to. Better yet: reach out to that person and ask questions regarding those elements you found inspirational from that work. If you can go to bed each night knowing you've attempted to do the best you can - great. Consistently learn from your "mistakes" - and embrace challenges from time to time. There's so much more to say / write, but every. single. one. of us has this feeling . . . David DuChemin's site is a fantastic resource covering many of these elements - and he's a prolific writer - don't mean to drop a link - but he's really that good with words (and his photography is excellent too) https://davidduchemin.com/category/pep-talks/page/2/
I feel like when you're so passionate about something and want to do your best to create something nice and go above and beyond, you'll always doubt yourself in the sense that you want to constantly improve on. It's best to take their advice on board and see what you can learn from it. It's happened to me before and just reminds me on what steps I should take to make things better
