** Books mentioned have Amazon or Bookshop affiliate links, meaning I make a few cents if you purchase through my link. I only recommend books that I’ve read.

Ellen Langer is one of my favourite mindfulness researchers. I previously wrote about her interview with Krista Tippett at On Being – The Science of Mindlessness and Mindfulness, with regard to photography as a practice of direct mindfulness.

What I didn’t know then is that Langer is also a painter and came to that medium later in life. I recently read her book on creativity and mindfulness, called On Becoming an Artist: Reinventing Yourself through Mindful Creativity. In it, she speaks of the value of uncertainty.

“When nothing is sure, everything is possible.” ~ Margaret Drabble

The quote above is paradoxical because we really don’t like uncertainty, yet we want to experience everything as possible. Below are some of Langer’s thoughts on this topic (with applications to photography).

Making “right” decisions is not easy because the outcome is never pre-determined.

How often do we paralyze ourselves by trying to make the “right” decision? Langer suggests we make one and then adjust until it feels right. What if we were to shift our perspective from making a “good” photograph to playing and experimenting until we get the photograph that feels right?

Our purpose in life is not to bring about an outcome, but to bring about ourselves.

When we focus on bringing about ourselves, the outcomes will follow. If we bring about ourselves; if we’re tapped into our intuition, trust our instincts, and know what we want to say, our photographs will naturally reflect that knowledge.

Langer says that small, daily annoyances are what causes most of our stress – things we cannot control.

But, she explains that once we realize that we have control over our psychological experience of these annoyances, our experience of them will not be so negative. The same goes for photography. Conditions will never be perfect. We will never have exactly the right gear. Every artist and every photographer has always worked with the materials at hand to create their art.

Every choice we make affects every other choice to come.

Therefore, we can never truly know the outcome of our choices. We grow when we become responsive (to what is), rather than reactive (to the way we think it should be). This is the essence of creativity, responding to our environment in a truly connected and authentic way, and expressing that connection through our work.

Those we call talented don’t know what they’re going to create any more than we do.

They just start and see where it leads them. Having expectations in photography sometimes causes us to miss incredible opportunities, because we’re not expecting them and therefore don’t see them. Letting go of expectations opens us to infinite possibilities.

Photograph without expectations today.

Books On Uncertainty

Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance by Jonathan Fields
The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts
Comfortable with Uncertainty by Pema Chodron