230 ☼ When everything feels scattered
Three questions that helped me find the thread between all my projects
Hi friends,
I want to tell you about something I’ve been working through lately, because I think it might be useful to you too.
Right now I’m juggling:
A portrait series about 100+ Dutch startup founders (Vliegwiel)
A five-year documentary project about Amsterdam creatives and their workspaces (Creatives In/AMS)
A portrait series about a very special artist village and 68 people who work there
A body of work I made in Ukraine this past summer documenting family life during wartime
A series of fictional comedy videos (The Chain, and one TBD)
This newsletter and the Process workbooks
On paper, that looks scattered and insane and maybe even reckless. A few months ago it kind of felt that way too. It wasn’t planned to all come at once, and so I had that familiar feeling of being pulled in too many directions, unsure if any of it added up. You probably know that feeling whether you’re full time, or balancing a day job with creative project and family life. You’re making work, maybe good work, but the thread between it all has gone slack.
So I sat down and tried to figure out what was actually going on by asking myself three honest foundational questions.
The first one:
Who am I as a photographer? Not in a branding sense, but more so in the sense of what it is that I always come back to. For me, the answer was pretty clear once I stopped overthinking it. I find stories about people who I think are special and that deserve more attention, and I share them with the hope that they might inspire someone to pursue or experience something they needed a nudge for. That’s true whether I’m in a sign-painting studio in Amsterdam for my Creatives project, or sitting with family in their kitchen in Ukraine. The settings are wildly different. The drive is the same.
If you feel like your work is all over the place, it might help to look at it this way. Not at the subjects, but at what pulled you toward them. When you stop to really think about it, there’s usually a pretty clear and consistent pattern to be found.
The second question:
What am I actually building?
This is where I got the most clarity. Instead of trying to make one giant project that contains everything, I started thinking of my work as separate containers. Flywheel is about giving a human face to startups by showing the founders who are building companies and creating jobs, the hurdles they face, the lessons they’ve learned. And ultimately, it is our ambition to make the people in government who shape policy aware of how they could better support these builders for the greater good.
Creatives In/AMS is about showing the world that Amsterdam is home to an amazingly talented, diverse, and significant community of creatives that most people outside the Netherlands don’t know about. The Ukraine work is about resilience and holding onto daily life rituals and family under impossible circumstances.
The comedic videos and The Best Medicine are about shining a light on the incredible community of English-language comedy in Amsterdam. Each one has its own tone, its own rules, its own reason to exist. They don’t need to be one thing. They just need to come from the same person.
I think a lot of us get stuck because we try to cram every idea into one project or series. We have to remember that we are allowed to make different things, and actually I would even say we should. Depending on how much time you can spend, multiple projects at the same time, as long as they are in different stages (shooting, research, design, etc.) can be great. It gives each idea room to breathe and keeps you from overstuffing any single one.
The third question is the smallest but maybe the most important:
What am I actually doing when I show up?
Unless it’s a client shoot, I tend to not plan out my shoots very much. I don’t walk in with a checklist or a mood board. I approach it more like improv comedy in the sense that I arrive and respond to what I find. I try to figure out the best way to tell the story that’s in front of me. The preparation isn’t in pre-visualizing the shot. It’s in knowing who I am and what I’m building. That’s what allows me to be open when I get there. This is a life-long project, to be in this mind state and not feel insecure or obsess over other people’s expectations, but it’s worth fighting this fight!
I think this is where the first two questions help the most. When we are clear on your identity, and our projects have their own containers, we don’t need to overthink each individual shoot or walk or afternoon with the camera. We can just show up and be curious. The clarity is already there underneath. It frees you up to be responsive instead of rigid. Think of those people who just have a uniform so they don’t have to spend time thinking about what to wear every morning.
These three questions and elements:
knowing who you are
giving your ideas their own containers
trusting yourself to respond in the moment
It’s not some official system with an acronym, but it really helps me when I revisit them every so often. And if it helps to hear: I still don’t have it all figured out. I’m writing this on a Friday afternoon with a to-do list that could fill a notebook and I am performing an improv show tonight. But the work feels right. And that matters more than having it all buttoned up.
If this letter did something for you, I'd really appreciate it if you shared it with a friend. ❤️
Your turn — Giveaway
What are your containers? If you have multiple projects or ideas pulling at you, drop them in the comments. Sometimes just writing the list makes the thread between them visible. One commenter gets a mystery goodie bag from my studio, with a photo book, some test prints or film, whatever I pull from the drawer that week.
See you next week!
Wesley
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From The Studio
I recently shot a new ad for Excire and I’m really proud of how it turned out. We had a very special co-star and he was very hard to work with let me tell ya! If you want to see what happens when you find duplicates everywhere, not just files on your computer, give it a watch: [video link] or click below.
Check out Excire here, and receive 15% off with the coupon code "PROCESS" at checkout. The video was written and directed by me, and shot and edited by the wonderful Alain Galje.
This Week’s Camera + Tools
Camera: Canon EOS R5 + Canon RF 24-70 mm f/2.8 L IS USM, Fuji X100F, Fujifilm GFX 100S with a Fujifilm GF 80mm f/1.7 R WR
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This was really helpful, thank you! And it’s great advice I think for anyone struggling to figure out their identity generally, what it is they’re trying to accomplish with their lives. Well said.
As a photojournalist who has spent decades between London, Venice, and Prague, I’ve found that the 'scattered' feeling often stems from trying to capture everything at once. My antidote is usually 'The Single Lens' rule. By forcing myself to see the world through just a 35mm for the day, the world simplifies, and the focus returns. It’s a practice of constraints rather than freedom. Thank you for articulating this,,it resonates deeply with the workshop environment too.