“20 Seconds of Insane Courage” - A SXSW Story

Anne and I went and saw We Bought a Zoo last night. Now, it was mostly (really) campy, but it was definitely punctuated with moments of absolute brilliance. My favorite stories have always been the ones in which a normal guy, going about his normal life, realizes that doing something big is really just a series of small choices. One of the central themes is the idea that all it takes to really do something brave, something worthwhile, is “20 seconds of insane courage.” It’s a beautiful articulation of an easily overlooked truth. The gap between courage and fear just isn’t that wide. And if there is one thing that you need to make anything of substance, no matter how small, it’s courage. 

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This past year, during SXSW, some friends and I spent the week there creating media under the moniker, Strata Press. It was a portrait project created by Eric Anderson, Cody Bess, Andrew Shepherd and myself. We secured studio space right off of 6th Street, in the heart of the craziness, and spent the week having a steady stream of bands in for portraits and interviews. It was a beautiful week of 14 hour days spent creating with friends. Now this was March, and I was fresh off of the Beyond the Still shoot, the premiere at Sundance, and a generally becoming convinced about this new direction; filmmaking. Yet, here I was, in the middle of a huge portrait project that was planting me firmly back in the world of photography. I hadn’t yet decided how photography was going to figure into my future work, if at all. I watched Eric and Andrew and Cody really shine. These guys are unnaturally talented image makers and it was both inspiring and intimidating to all be creating alongside each other. Healthy competition is definitely a huge part of getting better, but nearly every day, late at night, as we were collectively surveying the images from the day, I couldn’t help but feel like I just wasn’t really adding anything. It wasn’t that I was shooting terribly, it’s just that I couldn’t find that “thing” that was mine, that was my way of seeing what SXSW was. It felt like with very polaroid Eric pulled, every time Andrew breezed back in the studio from an alleyway portrait, every time Cody effortlessly re-invented the look of the cramped studio we were in, this pressure crept a little higher up the back of my neck.

Often, the first step in the process of creating your own particular style, your own way of seeing, is recognizing what isn’t you. It can be confusing because images you respond to, images you wish you’d have made, can all be things that wouldn’t ever be your style. Getting better at creative work is almost entirely about making better choices and discarding options to winnow down seemingly infinite possibilities into a single shape, image, mood. It takes maturity. It takes experience. It takes, in a sense, courage. Too bad these things are so damn elusive.

It was the last day, late in the afternoon, and that pressure had settled like a weight around my neck. I was staring out the back window of the alley and saw a couple drunkenly, hysterically making out. A little further down a waiter tap danced through ankle-high piles of broken bottles. And further still, a band was unloading brightly colored guitar cases that shimmered in the fading, golden sun. Suddenly, if a bit surpirsingly, it hit me. If I have a skill when it comes to photography, if I have a way of seeing, it isn’t in a studio. It isn’t in a set-up situation. It isn’t in a portrait transaction. It’s out on the street, when life streams by and all you can do is wade in to see what you might find.

So I borrowed Eric’s 24mm lens and slid down the back stairs without really thinking. I paused at the door that opened onto the intersection of 6th and Trinity, suddenly feeling terrified. I hadn’t shot anything on the street in months and months. It is, if anything, a skill you have to maintain. But maybe that doesn’t matter right now. I just needed 20 seconds of courage, as Cameron Crowe would have put it, to get out the door. I was going to be fearless and it wouldn’t matter who I pissed off, wouldn’t matter how uncomfortable I might feel…I was going to shoot the SXSW that I saw through my lens in that moment. Deep breath, and out the door I went.

Are the images unbelievable? No, of course not. But, again, that isn’t the point. The amazing thing was that as I was shooting, the weight slowly began lifting. It became apparent that that weight wasn’t anything but fear. Fear that I wasn’t a good photographer, that I’d been revealed a fraud by my friend’s talent, that I didn’t have anything to say, that I wouldn’t have anything to show for my time there. I was letting fear keep me from making something honest…

But there, in the fading afternoon sun, in the middle of the busiest intersections of one of the busiest music festivals in the country, with people swarming all around me, I suddenly felt a calm. This was right where I needed to be. And off I went, into the crowd, camera in hand…