Have You Lost Your Passion?

Post written by Steve Otto. Follow me on Twitter.

My wife and I enjoy the opportunity to provide wedding entertainment and we are in wedding season full force right now. With almost every weekend booked up until October, except for several we set aside for family vacations, we have the chance to be a part of the most special day of many people’s lives. It is an incredible experience.

One Event. Many Vendors. I’m guessing by now, you’ve been a guest at many weddings in your life. You’ve seen the Bride walk down the aisle holding her Father’s arm. Watched as the Bride and Groom stare into each others eyes during their first dance. And at the end of the night, hear them drive off into the sunset with the amusing sound of clanging cans on strings dragging behind their car. Of course, making the entire day happen requires a lot of hands. At a typical reception, there are a lot of people involved: The Wait Staff, the Entertainment, Photographer, Videographer, Florist, someone who made the Cake, and many others.

A Job or a Passion? We’ve had the benefit of working with all kinds of vendors at many receptions over the years and made a lot of friends in the wedding industry. But there is one thing we find very sad – and that’s when we come across a vendor who has lost their passion. I suppose it’s quite possible they never had their passion in the first place. It amazes me how someone can take for granted the event that they are apart of. Occasionally, we all have a bad day. Maybe some other area of your life is having problems. But as soon as Amy and I are setup and guests start arriving, we are completely focused on making the day as perfect as it can be for the Bride and Groom and their guests. Our experience with other vendors is not always the same.

One Grumpy Photographer. At a recent wedding we were a part of, we worked with a photographer who I had worked with once before. I had a pretty bad experience with him the last time, but had hoped that he was just having a bad day and failed to leave it at home. However, we quickly found this was his normal demeanor. One of our biggest pet peaves is when a wedding vendor forgets what a special day this is and simply wants to do the bare minimum and then flee the event. Enter Mr. Grumpy. From the second he arrived at the reception he started his all too familiar routine – asking what the agenda was and seeing if we could modify things. His goal was to clearly move any event that required his photography skills to as early as possible so he could leave as soon as possible.

I should back up to the ceremony. Our first surprise came after the ceremony completed and one of the Grandparents was sitting just inside and was hesitant to go outside, which was a bit windy at the time, for pictures. His response to here was, “What else do you expect me to do. I can’t control the weather. Come on. Outside!” We were shocked.

Studio Man. Our other clue that this photographer had lost his passion was his lack of care in performing his job. I am not a photographer, but I have been blessed to work with many amazing photographers over the years and you start to notice and admire certain skills the elite photographers have in their craft. First off, the amazing photographers don’t seem to care about time. They are their for the entire event and want to capture every last moment. Also, the amazing photographers are able to capture the emotion in just about any moment without interfering with the moment. Studio Man lacks this skill or at least doesn’t wish to exert the energy for this. As soon as I announced any moment, such as the first dance, father/daughter dance, or cake cutting, Studio Man was instantly there interrupting the moment to force a pose. It was not uncommon for him to actually step forward (picture this during one of the dances) and pose their faces. It was clear that this guy belonged in a studio where he could pose and turn faces all he wants.

He actually said that. At one point after one of the pictures he attempted was foiled (I don’t want to share too many details so as to keep him anonymous), I tried to offer some empathy. He returned that with telling me that by not doing all of the special dance events and garter and bouquet tossing events immediately that the bride, groom, and their parents look like @#$%. Because they have been dancing and having fun, they now look horrible, and the pictures would come out awful. This was the same reasoning he gave me at my last event when he tried to rewrite the entire agenda the bride and groom had planned out. My wife shared later on that she was tempted to ask him (as he was trying to pressure her as well to change the agenda as well) if we should do their last dance immediately following their first dance so they would still look good.

The real issue. I actually pondered over the idea that the pictures may not look good, for quite some time, because my goal is to work as a team player and have the best day possible for the bride and groom. The best thing I could do is compare our other events to the ones working with Studio Guy. I’ve never had any other photographer complain about poor pictures because of the similar agenda we use. In fact I just recently got an email from a terrific photographer we worked with in Saratoga Springs, Mark Sweeney, that read “Alice and Mike came by last night to pick up their proof album and we were all in agreement that you were fantastic!” The key difference is that Mark was their for the event, not himself. He wasn’t Studio Guy posing everything. He floated around and was able to capture magical images. He wasn’t looking at his watch and using the excuse lie that if we didn’t do every photography event immediately, then the the bride and her father would look like profanity. The real issue is that Studio Guy wanted to get his work done and get out of there as quickly as possible. The real issue is that he had lost his passion.

I lost my cool. After being the target of several profanities and redirected anger because I was the one responsible for keeping him there longer than he wanted (I chose to put the bride and groom first instead of his wishes), I finally lost my cool with Grumpy Studio Guy. In response to hearing how all the people in his pictures were going to look like @#%# for the fourth time, as politely as I could muster, I finally told him that I worked with many incredible photographers whose pictures come out amazing and I’d be happy to pass their names on to him so they could give him some tips. As you can image, that didn’t go over quite too well. He immediately defaulted to defending his reason for moving everything up and assured me it wasn’t because he wanted to leave early. He explained that he didn’t work by the hour and that he could care less if the pictures were crappy because it wasn’t his wedding. I replied, “That’s a terrific point. This is NOT your wedding. And perhaps in your case you should start charging by the hour.” I couldn’t understand what he said after that as he cut through the dance floor pulling his photography bag behind him. I wish I could have let it go, but I have little patience for someone who is so uncaring about such an important day for someone else and I will stand up for the Bride and Groom every time.

What to do if you’ve lost your passion. If you have lost your passion at something, here are a few quick steps you can do to regain your passion:

1. Be Honest with Yourself. Admit that you are in a field or job that you aren’t passionate about. Stop making excuses as to why you want to leave early, or why your pictures are coming out poorly. Start with yourself.
2. Take your mind off of yourself. Take a moment and remember why you are there and the reason behind what you are doing. If you are only worried about your own time and self, chances are you’ll lose site of the bigger picture.
3. Get Creative. It’s easy to slowly lose your passion if you have been doing the same job, the same way, year after year. Come up with new ideas to try. Work to improve yourself and come up with fun ideas to make your job more enjoyable. Your enjoyment will spill over into success.
4. Get Inspired. Sometimes you need to look to others for inspiration. See how the best performers in your field are doing it. Talk with them. Get a mentor. Ask them what motivates them. Read magazines or books on your field. There are countless resources available if you are willing to invest some time.
5. Quit. If all else fails and you find you just can’t be creative or new, and after you have been honest with yourself you find you are still simply a Grumpy Studio Guy, then I would recommend quitting. It is far worse to have a negative impact on other people and do a poor job (especially for someone’s wedding day), not to mention you appear to be making yourself miserable. Invest some time into determining what your real passion is and then layout the steps to achieve that.

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