Story / 24 Feb 2014 / 0 COMMENTS

Taking on Challenges

It has been quite a while since my last post and a lot of things have happened since then. I only have three weeks left until I am out of a job but I am actually looking forward to that moment.

In the last six months that I have worked full time for a single company I have realised that I prefer working on my own. I don’t mean that I don’t like working with other people, on the contrary, but I like being my own boss and having the sole responsibility over my own actions. With working as a freelancer comes a lot of risk and challenges, but it is precisely that, which keeps me interested and motivated.

I remember getting the best advice that any designer could ever get, in a pub in my first year of university by one of my tutors. He said that what he always tries to do is accept any challenge or job he could get, even though he did not have any clue or the necessary skills. Those he said: “You will learn, when you need to figure out to make it all work”. What better way to learn something then to be forced to do it because you need the skills to finish a job!

I have wholeheartedly taken on his advice, but instead of pretending I knew everything I give my clients a warning that I will need to figure out how to solve this and that they should expect some setbacks from time to time. Thankfully my clients have been very understanding and once you do get to overcome the challenge both you and the client have something to celebrate about.

When I look at it, the projects that I most enjoyed were the once about topics I didn’t have a clue about. Take the Domestic Science Machines I did for my degree project. I didn’t have any background in science, engineering or electronics but still managed to come up with something interesting that also worked, because I wanted to learn more about something I did not have any knowledge of. The excitement of learning something new is the most thrilling experience that one can have and the key is to keep that excitement alive to see it through, which I must confess does not happen that often.

With challenges also comes fear, its normal, because in order to challenge yourself, you have to step outside of your comfort zone, which is frankly quite a scary experience. In the past I have been quite bad at doing that, as I have written about in my last post, but I think I got much better at taking on challenges because of one thing: Photography.

You see, when I started off with photography I didn’t even thought that it would define my life as much as it does now. I one day decided to get myself a decent point and shoot camera and take pictures of building in Bangkok as I wanted to upload them to an architecture forum on skyscraper.com. When I got to Pantip plaza (its a huge shopping centre dedicated just to electronics) and saw the shop windows filled with a huge range of cameras, I couldn’t decide which one to go for. Until a Canon 350D caught my eye and I thought to myself – fuck it – I want that one instead of a point-and-shoot. Within one week I came back to return the camera – no not because I didn’t like it, I just wanted the bigger one which became the 40D. I was so fascinated by what the camera could do that I pretty much exhausted all the settings of my camera within one week and had to upgrade to a more professional one.

So how does buying an expensive camera help me face challenges you might ask? It was during the Beijing Olympics and the torch was carried all over the world including Bangkok. My photography mentor Burkhard, who also happened to be our pastor invited me to come with him to take pictures of the masses gathered to see the torch being carried across town. I was a bit reluctant to step out and take pictures of strangers, but my camera somehow gave me confidence. You see, if you have a big camera, people think that you are either a professional photographer or a journalist, and that is what people there and even the police did when I started taking pictures. I was in the middle of the road snapping away and felt amazing that i could just do that. Until the police at some point asked me to show me a press pass and I just sneaked away very quickly.

From that moment on, the camera became a tool that helped me get into a zone, a state of mind where I felt confident enough to do things I would never do without my camera. I recall standing in the middle of the road taking pictures of traffic light trails at night, lying on the ground to get a better angle of a building or climbing a seawall before it got swept over by a huge wave just to get that one image (to the horror of my fellow travel buddies).

But there are still many times where I still have problems facing challenges, especially when it involves other people or bending certain rules. There was this one time, a day after I met Karin, who I must say is the most fearless and outgoing person I have ever met, when we decided to check out St. Pancras station to take images around the area. This is when she said to me: “How about we go inside the Hotel in St. Pancras and take pictures there?” I felt immediately queasy about the thought of waltzing in a 5 star hotel with a huge camera and my rather shabby clothes and outright refused. But Karin somehow managed to drag me in there nonetheless and I don’t regret any moment of it. We just pretended to be guests staying there and checked out the stunning architecture inside the lobby and hallway. No one really cared that we were taking pictures in there so I managed to take this image of this gorgeous staircase without any problem. Although the picture itself is not my best, the challenge of getting that image makes it pretty special to me.

That moment made me realise that the most fulfilling thing in life is when you face your own personal challenges and overcome them because you decided to ignore the fear. And with every fear you conquer you learn to be more confident about facing even worse ones. My dad once told me about a German saying that has shaped his life:

“When you face stones that block your road, don’t just walk around them, start clearing them instead, as there will be bigger ones waiting for you.”