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The forecast for this morning was wind, rain and a temperature of about 3c. Still I put on my running gear and headed out. Turns out it was only windy and cold. No rain. Phew. Tomorrows forecast looks to be the same but with rain. Darn.
There’s a ton of articles online about running is good for your mental health. Loads of personal stories. Tweets. Instagrams. Upbeat inspirational posters. Loads. The internet is not short of how running is good for your mental health.
- Moving the body, boosting the mind.
- Benefits of Running for Depression and Anxiety
- Depression, anxiety, OCD – running helped us beat them. By a photographer no less.
Yet I’m sat here depressed.
I’ve never found running to be good for my mental health. I do love a good run. I love to be out in the rain when no-one else is. I love to be the crazy one defying the idea of what I should be doing now. Yet I still can be depressed 12 hours later.
I don’t know what’s good for my mental health. It’s far too complicated a problem for me to understand. I just have to take it day by day and not give up. I will run and swim and it will make no difference. Maybe I should accept that the two things are completely unrelated. I mean you never see articles saying how eating eggs in the morning stops you getting attacked by chickens at night. Maybe for me running is just running. Something I do and then I’m onto the next thing. There is no massive high that I ride through the day. I like that I’m defying my programming and doing it. But it doesn’t have some magical power to defend me from 12 hours worth of events that can lead to depression.
I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. Maybe I should go for a run? Shake it off?
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My wife and I went for a stroll along the promenade today. It was a lovely crisp autumn afternoon. The fishermen were out by the rivers edge. The sun was just coming through the clouds to make some lovely soft pastel colours in the sky and there was no wind at all. It was wonderfully peaceful.
I carried 2 cameras with me. Both digital but they have quite different philosophies on how you work. Partly due to technical limitations of the times. So I had a Leica Q and a Leica M240. The Q is a fixed lens, fully automatic if you want it to be, point and shoot camera. It has an EVF (Electronic View Finder) so what you see is what you get. On the other hand the M240 uses an interchangeable lens system and is fully manual. You have to do everything yourself. Set the aperture. Set the focus. Set the shutter. Everything. It does not have an EVF. It has a traditional viewfinder that sits just to the top left of the lens. So what you see isn’t at all what you get. What you see is the world around you and some little guidelines telling you roughly what the lens is seeing.
Jumping between the cameras is interesting and possibly a bad way to work. They’re two different ideologies. One very anologue and the other very digital. I bought the M240 to enjoy slower days away from digital screens. The camera does indeed have a screen on it but if you want to ignore it you can. It works more like a film camera in that respect. The Q allows you to see how the settings you’ve dialed in will affect the end photo. You can even see the black and white setting in action via the EVF. It’s very cool and really handy to be able to see your settings in action. It saves a lot of time as you don’t have to take sample shots to check things look ok. You can see it right there.
As we walked along I started to think about this way of working and it felt like with the Q I was seeing a photo I wanted and pressing “save” where as with the M240 I was making a photograph and seeing how it came out. Now I know its neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things. Just go out and m/take photographs however you want. But there was a thought in the back of my mind that maybe with the Q all I’m doing is seeing someone elses photograph in the viewfinder and then saving a copy for myself. By that I mean I’m seeing something I’ve seen somewhere else, stylistically speaking. My mind knows it’s a good photograph so when I see shades of it in mine on the screen I press the shutter button. The save button. Where as on the M240 I’m seeing the real world and all I’ve got is a dot and 2 arrows telling me whether the image is going to be over or under exposed. I have to imagine how the photo will look and work to find something interesting using only what I can see. I press the shutter button and I can either move onto the next idea or freak out and check whether it worked on the display.
There is an idea in photography of taking vs making a photo. I can’t say which is right or which I prefer. But it really gets you thinking when you’re carrying round two very different cameras. I guess whichever way of working gets you the good photograph is the best way to work. What I’ve found over the 2 years I’ve had both cameras is that I get better photos with the Q than the M240. I just haven’t found the confidence to work without that digital net. I’m too used to working with a screen now.
“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”
Ansel Adams*shrug*
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My wife and I spent the weekend away a while ago with some friends. On Saturday we went for a long walk with them around the coast line of the island, in torrential sideways rain. It was a fascinating trip that really got me thinking about anxiety, depression and all that fun stuff. This was before I recieved my ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) diagnosis. I was unaware of who I really was at the time of this trip, which may have contributed to it.
I had no idea how long the walk would be or where we were going. I tried to plan for it. Planning is good. Present me has to make all the decisions, know all the variables and account for everything that future me might run in to so that future me doesn’t have to panic. But I didn’t know the plan and my social anxiety made it impossible for me to ask what the plan was.
5 minutes into the walk and I felt like I was wearing the wrong gloves. I had on a pair of thin gloves so I could use my camera. My thicker and warmer gloves I’d left in the house. I could have grabbed them. I had space in my bag. I didn’t. Why didn’t I? This is exactly what past me was supposed to have done to protect myself from panic.
10 minutes into the walk and I wasn’t doing great. I kept thinking “I’m wearing the wrong top. I shouldn’t be wearing a cotton hoodie. It’s not breathable. I’m too hot. I’ll be covered in sweat by the time we get to the pub.” My anxiety was growing.
15 minutes into the walk and I’m getting worse. “I should have bought my Fuji XT2. It’s weather sealed and a bigger lens meant I could get closer to those waves crashing over the rocks without actually getting close to them.”
20 minutes into the walk and I regretted wearing the lovely socks my wife knitted for me. The mud and rain would surely ruin them. I’m an idiot.
I was beating myself up over everything I could. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. I was supposed to have account for these thoughts and enjoyed the walk with friends.
I distanced myself from the group so I could take photos. That’s what I would tell them if asked but maybe I was distancing myself from people because I was unknowingly having an autistic meltdown? The weather had changed and I wasn’t prepared. The camera gear I bought was “wrong”. I was lagging behind the group so I couldn’t often get the photos I wanted. They were on a walk. I was on a photography adventure. Everything was wrong. It was all just wrong.
Could I have walked along side them and gone “Wow look at that?” click and carried on being sociable? We’ll never know. My choices created anxiety and my depression removed me from the group. I was alone in torrential rain on cliff edges. Thankfully my depression never presented any of the really bad thoughts while I was on those cliffs.
After a while, and maybe because his work flashed up on social media recently, I had this whacky idea. If someone dropped Daid? Moriyama into this setting what we he do? He is known for bucking the trend, using any camera because it’s just a tool and doesn’t really matter and for gritty black and white image. So I put myself in that mindset. “What can I do with this Leica?” instead of “This is the wrong camera.” Chase Jarvis is known for coining the phrase “The best camera is the one you have with you.” While I get what he’s trying to say there it’s hard to shake off the feeling that the better camera is the one at home. So in sideways rain with a non-weather sealed camera and just a 50mm lens I started doing landscapes however damn well I pleased. Rain on the lens? Fine. It’s part of the story. Just make something.
About 40 minutes into the walk and something had changed. I was actually happy and oddly talking to myself. My head moved from depression to some hybrid of Daido Moriyama and Leveson Wood. My gloves were so soaked I was used to the cold. I didn’t care if my back was sweaty from wearing the wrong top because my trousers were soaked anyway. My anxiety was gone. The worse the conditions the more I enjoyed it because it added something to the images. This is the kind of adventure walk I’d been longing for. Someone else was leading the way. All I had to do was walk and make photographs. Just me and a camera against the weather. It was fantastic. I felt like I was finally doing something instead of pondering it.
After about 1hr 20mins we reached the pub for lunch and I crashed hard. I walked into decisions to make and complex socialising. I was starving but we had a big tea planned. The only thing on the menu I could eat was a burger and chips. A big meal to fill myself up for the 2 hour walk back but would I be too full to enjoy the tea we had to eat because we had defrosted food? I couldn’t answer that. So I was stuck in a loop.
I had been looking forward to discussing this experience and instead my mind shutdown because there were too many social situations to deal with. I removed myself from the situation by sitting in the corner and tried to do Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). If your brain is telling you something negative then you counter it with positive evidence.
Negative: “I’m going to die alone.” Positive: Can I see the future? No? Then how do I know I’m going to die alone. Silly brain.
In this situation though everything my brain was telling me was sort of correct. I could backup the negative thoughts with evidence. This wasn’t good. I retreated into a shell and accepted what my brain was telling me. “I’m a burden. I’m just in the way. No-one cares.” When you’re in that mindset you just want out of the situation entirely because you feel so on edge like a glass about to fall and smash. It’s awful.
Here’s where I failed again. I was trying to fight autistic meltdown with CBT therapy for depression. This wasn’t what I needed. I didn’t need to fight negative thoughts and force myself to chat to people. I needed… I’m not sure what I needed. Meltdown isn’t something I’m good at dealing with yet because I’ve only had about 1 year to analyse who I really am and how to handle that. I think in this situation what I really needed to do was be honest with my wife and say “I am not doing good. I don’t need to go. I just need space.” Maybe what I needed was noise cancelling headphones and space. This was a busy pub filled with dogs barking, people talking, bar staff to negotiate food orders with and decisions to make. I needed to sit outside and reboot. Maybe I should take up cigar smoking? It’s a good reason to be outside on your own.
I power walked home ahead of the group. I didn’t want to feel like I was burdening anyone by slowing them down while taking photos. I also wanted to get my blood flowing to see if the reason why I crashed was biological. The fast pace did nothing to help. I arrived back at the beach for sunset and tried to talk things over with my wife. Eventually my brain relented and let me return to “normal”. We bought some local beer and headed back to the house.
What I thought happened on that trip was that the depression was caused by external forces. Maybe the fact that I’d lost the connection to the group, so I couldn’t have a meaningful conversation about my discovery meant I had no control over the situation. I thought I was just dead weight.
This trip happened a few months before I recieved my ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) diaganosis. My thoughts on this trip were not from an autistic perspective but from a depression perspective. I do not believe this could have been fixed by socailising in a community of like minded people. I think little things quickly built to big things and meltdown. Here’s a list of classic triggers that can cause meltdown;
- Sudden changes
- Being taken by surprise or caught off guard
- Not understanding why something has happened/is happening
- Other people failing to explain adequately what is or will happen in a given situation
- Having too many tasks to complete at once
- Feeling rushed
- Feeling overwhelmed by too many questions or people
- Use of non-concrete language such as ‘maybe’ ‘I will see’ or ‘If you have been good’
- Transitions, for example moving between classes, leaving home, school holidays or moving between activities at home such as mealtimes or bedtimes.
- Being given too many choices
- Being given vague or too open ended instructions
Meltdown vs shutdown
- Meltdown may present externally as anger and lashing out
- Shutdown may present internally as non-verbal and isolated
Most of those can be applied to this trip. It’s possible I was closer to having autistic shutdown than meltdown. I blamed depression but I was way off. How was I supposed to know? No-one told me at school that I was like this. The psycologist my parents took me to as a teen because they were trained to spot autism didn’t spot this. He thought it was dyslexia. How am I supposed to fix depression when it’s autism causing the issue? How are you? Johann Hari’s book ‘Lost Connections’ suggests nine causes of depression and anxiety. A book I respect for its indepth discussion on the issue backed by scientific information.
- Disconnection from meaningful work
- Disconnection from other people
- Disconnection from meaningful values
- Disconnection from childhood trauma
- Disconnection from status and respect
- Disconnection from the natural world
- Disconnection from a hopeful or secure future
- The role of genes
- Brain changes
On this walk you could argue I had disconnection from people but I was in the natural world which he and science suggests is a way to overcome depression. I had it all wrong. Totally wrong. I wasn’t to know. I’ve been to a number of therapy sessions for depression over 10 years and I don’t know how much of that advice is valid anymore. It was all from the wrong perspective. I need a new one.
For all the talk of super powers and acceptance of being different there’s this down side where I just want to fly off into the sky and be away from the world. This is autism and it’s hard. It’s really hard. I have to learn to notice when something is autistic meltdown and when something is depression caused by one of the 9 things above. I have to do that while I’m in a state of distress so I can properly resolve it. That is exceedingly hard.
Here are some resources on meltdown if you want to learn more;
- National Autistic Society
- The M Word: We need to talk about adult autistic meltdowns
- Autistic adults share what could have helped them during meltdowns as kids
- Autistic meltdowns: From the inside
- Why autistic people do that
- Autistic meltdowns and overloads
- Shutdowns | What’s that?!
- Ask an Autistic #15 – What are Autistic Meltdowns
- Ask an Autistic #20 – What are Autistic Shutdowns
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For that one fraction of a second, you were open to options you had never considered. *That* is the exploration that awaits you. Not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence.
Q, Star Trek: The Next Generation – ‘All good things’I’m on day 9 of my NaNoWriMo blog adventure. I’ve hopefully got some good stuff coming up. There’s a few thoughts I want to explore over the next few weeks. That’s the fun really. I’m simply exploring and putting the thought out there to you dear reader.
Also I’ve started a newsletter. It’s a way of keeping up to date with this blog, seeing some other photographs I’ve made but maybe not shared and hopefully some valuable links / discussion on topics like photography and autism. Feel free to sign up and tell a friend.
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I like live music. I used to do music photography all the time. I’ve been lucky enough to photograph quite a few big names too. It’s a pretty fantastic thing to be able to do. You’re right at the front and someone you enjoy is playing music while you photograph them. You’re in the moment. Totally concentrating on getting the photos while enjoying the music. It’s such good fun. I’ve moved on from those days now and only really go to gigs to see the band playing live. Every summer my wife and I go to Bluedot Festival for the entire weekend. Being autistic makes it complicated.
Lets break down some of the classic issues;
— sensory overload due to sound and light
— inability to focus on just the event and block the rest of the crowd out
— crowds and all the unknown variables
— being in the way and feeling like I shouldn’t be there (I’m 6ft5 and often in the way)I worry for weeks up to the gig because what if my sensory issues meant I picked up on something I couldn’t control and ruined the gig for me? It’s a big crowded room with so many unknown variables. When I’m at a gig as an audience member I’m on edge because I never know what the crowd will do. At any moment someone could start smoking or worse… talking. I know it sounds silly but I’m already at 9 on the anxiety level by the time I get in there. Just one little thing I’m at 10 and everything is ruined. My love of that band. The night. My mind for days after as I re-live the event over and over again. So I worry before any gig.
My sensory issues pick up on all the audio and the flashing lights can get to me too so I’ve started wearing sunglasses at gigs. I guess I just look cool or maybe pretentious. Let’s go with cool. To help with audio based sensory overload I wear ear plugs during gigs. Something from my music photography days. I found them to reduce the volume to a reasonable level and they also make the sound seemingly better too. Unfortunately it also helps to clarify speech. So if someone stands next to me and talks all through the gig then I can hear every word and being autistic means its hard for me to filter out.
I’m a big fan of the album “The Race for Space” by Public Service Broadcasting. It uses archival audio from the space race and tells the journey of that era. We got the chance to see them live in Manchester a few years ago and I was really looking forward to it. That means then that I worry. Unfortunately at this gig there was a couple who were talking so loud they got shushed during the quiet tracks. The quiet tracks included “Fire in the Cockpit” which looks at the Apollo 1 disaster which killed all 3 astronauts on the launch pad. When you know the story its a very somber track. So these guys talked all the way through the gig and also for some reason needed to crinkle their plastic cup every few minutes. I couldn’t filter it out. None of it. I absorbed all the sound from that gig and unfortunately now I can’t listen to that album. It’s a trigger for me.
I know neurotypicals (non-autistic people) also have similar issues. People talking in a cinema will make anyone Hulk out and smash. But this. It’s worse. I notice everything at a gig and I can’t just concentrate on the music. I’m watching the settings on the camera phone app as someone tries to photograph the band. I’m wondering how someone can’t see their LED light is on on their phone while they film it. I’m listening to 3 different conversations and hearing none of them. I’m being attacked by the strobe lights. Some people aren’t dancing in time to the music and my internal clock is thrown off by that. Arg! Why can’t we all just sit still while they play the music? I’m so anxious and it stays with me for days if not weeks after. I’m at that gig living it in my head for a very long time. When we plan to go to another gig all that anxiety comes flooding back. I agree to go but I know it’s going to make me anxious for weeks. I’ll be on edge during the gig and close to overload. It’s exhausting. It’s like running a marathon just to enjoy something. If I make it through then I’m overjoyed. I did it! I enjoyed myself. Phew. Not sure I can do that again though.
Last summer I felt like I had a small break through. We went to Bluedot Festival about a week after getting my ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) diagnosis. Ardberg whisky were there giving out free samples. Score! They quickly became one of my favourite whiskeys. The weather for 90% of the weekend was glorious. We sat with friends, enjoyed food, beer and melted cookie and ice cream. Oh and the Chemical Brothers were playing. I’ve never seen them live and I was really looking forward to it. We stood at the edge of the crowd where its safe. People were talking. In my head I was telling myself “NO! Not this band. Not this time! You’re not taking them from me!” So we moved and found a new spot. People were smoking and talking. “Oh FFS! Just give me this one band!” We moved again. Closer to the middle. Closer to the chaos. Totally enveloped by the crowd. No way out. Thing is. In the crowd people aren’t casually filming or chatting to their mates about how they do the washing up. They just dance to the beat. In time too. For once I actually managed to disconnect and enjoy the music. It also helped that they had an insane set of visuals including robots. I was taken back to playing Wipeout on the PlayStation and to my early days of discovering electronic music. They were one of those bands who presented the idea to me of what really is music. Listen to ‘Music: Response’. It’s wild. So there we were in the thick of it just jumping to the beat. Maybe it was because I’d just been told I was autistic and that it explained so much of my life. Maybe it was because I didn’t give in and let someone ruin a gig for me. I fought back and found my space in the crowd and really connected with the beat.
I love music and seeing bands live. I’m writing this listening to the Mr Robot soundtrack. Read into that what you will. I cannot live without music. Maybe due to autism? A way of blocking out the world? I can’t say for sure but maybe food for thought. I do love live music though. I proposed to my wife after seeing Elbow live at Jodrell Bank because I had such a great time and couldn’t go one more minute without asking her to marry me so we could keep having times like that. I really want to keep having experiences like that. I want to avoid the anxiety for weeks up to the event. I want to switch off and lose myself in the music, the atmosphere, and the visuals. Do I wish I wasn’t autistic and could just dance the night away? I… I don’t think I do. I would lose too much of myself. I shouldn’t have to endure a gig like with Public Service Broadcasting and I shouldn’t have to spend 10 minutes fighting through a crowd to find a good space. Should I? It was so much easier when I was at the front photographing a band.
I discussed the issue with an autism professional at the NHS and they suggested that maybe it was control. I took control at Chemical Brothers but I lost control at Public Service Broadcasting. She may have been right. Maybe if I control the audio with ear plugs, the visual with sunglasses and who I stand next to I can enjoy a gig? Maybe. I just want to enjoy gigs with my wife and it’s so much hard work to do so.
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In Spring of 2017 I decided to switch camera systems from Nikon to Fuji. I had been toying with Fuji for some years and absolutely loved my X100s 35mm fixed lens camera. But I wasn’t 100% sure about switching systems. I had a few lenses and a XT1 and a XPro 1 and they were OK but obviousy no Nikon D800. However, Fuji recently released new lenses and cameras that everyone was raving about. I decided to drop a lot of money on them and really give them a test. I couldn’t rent one for a week. It had to be a proper test over a few months to really get to grips with the system.
2 years on and I sold the Fuji gear moving back to Nikon. The cameras were “fine”. Perfectly “fine”. Not great though. I had a Leica Q that was absolutely fantastic and so the Fuji’s just never lived up to that. I really tried to love them though. It never took.
The 2 years I had the Fujis were agony. Every day I questioned whether they were right. Every. Day. Every few hours I was reading forums and wondering about the cameras. Clients were perfectly happy with my work. Why was I worried? The Leica Q I had kept telling me things could be better. Things can always be better but at some point you have to stop buying cameras. Thankfully the next level up is totally out my price range so I never bother looking at it. But switching back to Nikon or Sony cameras was an option.
It gnawed at me every minute of every day. “Is this right?” “Are they right?” “If I’m not doing this sort of work anymore does it matter?” “What sort of work am I doing?” It was a tiny thought that grew and grew and unravelled everything in my mind. What would start as “Hmm the high ISO performance isn’t mind blowing.” would end with me questioning everything about myself as a photographer. I was driving myself crazy with this thinking. Some days I’d see an article that would give my mind a rest for a while. Some article on how gear doesn’t matter or this photographer is doing great work with such and such gear. I’d read it and be fine for a day. But the thoughts always came back.
I’m at peace now that I’ve switched and sold the gear. For the most part anyway. There are moments when I see someone on Instagram using a certain camera and think “Should I have…?” But its certainly not as bad as it has been over the past 2 years. The average photograph would often wonder if they need a new lens, camera of bit of kit. It’s normal to think you need a new toy to do a job. You probably don’t but the thoughts are normal and to be ignored. You don’t need new shiny. What happened to me wasn’t normal. I’ve been a photographer for 14 years now and I know the differene between gear lust and whatever this was.
I’ve tried to figure out this issue. Is it an autism thing? There’s something to be said of analysis paralysis too. For autistic people decision making can be complicated sometimes. Simply chosing which resturant to eat at can lead to over thinking and stress because people might be waiting on me to make a decision. I eventually make a decision only to find the resturant is out of the only food I can eat. So we go back to the other resturant right? Wrong. We’re here now so I have to way up a whole new set of variables and decide what is “right”. It’s a nightmare. These scenarios are usually caused by stress and pressure. I have to decide quickly and without the resources of the internet to help me make a calm logical decision. The camera issue was a daily inability to make a decision because whereever I looked online there was something to pull me one way or the other. I could validate one idea only to find a counter argument I agreed with. I was stuck. For 2 years.
A few months ago I found an article that might shed some light on the issue. I’m not medically trained so I can’t really give an expert opinion on the matter but it certainly got me thinking. On Huck Magazine there was an article on living with OCD in the digtial age. Now of course its super easy to self diaganose via the internet. However I’m not about to read 1 article on OCD and proclaim I’ve got it. That said, the article got me thinking.
Victoria constantly questions whether she is in the right relationship, and regularly doubts her sexual orientation. She spends hours online looking for information to determine whether she is heterosexual and if she really loves her boyfriend. “Google is the worst enemy for people with OCD,” she says, with exasperation. “It’s the perfect vessel for reassurance-seeking compulsions. Googling allowed me to endlessly feed my obsession without anyone telling me to ‘shut up about it already’.”
That part really got me thinking. I’m constantly questioning my relationship with one camera thinking I should be with another. I spent hours online looking for information to determine whether it really was a good fit for me or not. Whatever question I had I found a “Yes” answer for. I never found clarity but I did find a compulsion to feed.
As I’m relatively new to the world of autism I’m still not sure if this fits in somewhere or not. Could it have been a special interest? Maybe it was simply an inability to see the way out of the forrest. Too much information. No clear logical path. Whatever choice I made could lead me to the same place. It was a complex issue to resolve.
So how did I resolve it? I got lucky. Nikon launched a new camera that was only a bit more expensive than the Fuji ones I used but resolved every issue I had with them without creating new ones. I waited for a great deal and switched. I’ve been completely happy with them. I’m not sure I really mentally found a way out. Its more like I got lucky and found a transporter pad that beamed me out of there. This could easily happen again over anything. “The problem is choice.” To quote Neo from Matrix: Reloaded. I try and have a default choice for many occasions to remove the need for thought. Same meals every day. Same food in resturants. Same biscuits. It really helps me. As I’ve got older though I’ve introduced a bit more diversity into my life and as such complexity. Knowing now that I’m autistic I have to be wary of these issues.
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Today I woke up from a nightmare. I get stress dreams now. I never used to but now I do. Yay? Last night I was dreaming that I was commissioned to do a coporate job in London. I couldn’t easily get across town as the flyover had been dismantled. While I was on the train I was panicking that I was actually meant to be on a job in Liverpool instead of the London one. That part is actually true as I really did have a job in Liverpool today. When I got to the location in London I realised all I had was a 28mm fixed lens Leica and I was doing an awards ceremony. I basically had to stand on the edge of the stage to get good photos. Nothing was ideal. I was late for the portraits part too. It was a total mess. Luckily I woke up.
I arrived at todays real location, the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool, early and ready to go. I had a feeling I’d forgotten something which I assume was due to the dream. I had considered bringing everything just in case but I knew that was stupid. I had the cameras and lenses I needed to fulfil the brief. Camera straps? Nope. Totally forgot them. It was a relaxed job so I wouldn’t need a camera strap. My client arrives and we chat about some of the jobs I’ve done in the cathedral. I tell her about the real scary times I’ve tried to go into the bell tower and get photos. It’s a huge dark space that I once tried to defeat in 2001 and failed. I was only able to redo it in 2009 because I kept my eyes my shoes and took one step at a time while talking to friends all the way up. It’s a real treat when you get to the top. Amazing views for miles on a clear day. The 7 flights of stairs in that space are really hard to take.
View from the top of the Liverpool Cathedral Today was not that. Today was documenting an old people’s dance group. Nice eh?
The dance instructor arrives and explains we’re going to that exact scary space for at least 1 hour. I’m not just passing through it. I’m there for an hour. My client asks if I’ll be ok and like a true professional I say “I’ll be fine.” What’s the alternative? I let down a client? Nope. Not happening. I’ve hung out of a helicopter with the door open while over the River Mersey and I was fine then. I had this. Mostly. I’d see if I could have it.
Inside the Liverpool Cathedral One lift. Some stairs. Mentally blocking any thoughts of “On the other side of that is a 7 story drop”. Another lift. We arrive. It’s as I remember and feared. I walked into the space and tried not to look up. I really didn’t want to know where I was. After a few minutes I started to slowly look around and get used to this space that I’d be working in for the next hour. It was intimidating. You’re acutely aware of your position in the building with every step. It’s obviously perfectly safe and its just my mind running wild with anxiety. I kept telling myself that. I kept looking around slowly. Eventually I did acclimatise and was able to get the photos my client needed. I even started to play with the space and wished I’d brought more gear.
So today I awoke from a nightmare to face a real nightmare and I survived. Maybe I even grew a little and I’m better for it. This is why I love being a photographer. I get to go places I’d never normally grow and let them change me for the better. Nothing worth doing is ever easy. Other than eating chocolate of course.
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I’m very noise sensitive. If the neighbours have music on and there’s a beat coming through the wall it gets to me. It got so bad once that I jumped in my car and drove to West Kirby marine lake because I just needed to get out. I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t do anything. I just needed out. I can’t really explain the feeling other than growing anxiety, stress, panic and tension in my stomach. If I’m at home and the neighbours put music on I have to put mine on louder, which isn’t really very polite. The other option is to leave but I work from home so sometimes I can’t. That feeling though. That constant barrage of inescapable sound that makes me want to walk in front of a bus just to find peace. It’s terror.
I also have issues in loud environments processing sound. Chatting with people in a bar is impossible. I just can’t process what you’ve said. I can probably hear it but it’s noise. I can’t really seperate it from the 200 conversations going on against a beat from an overly loud DJ. We may as well stand there and setup a WhatsApp group. That’d be way easier. Now I’ve got the ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) diagnosis and I’m less worried about what people think of me if I bail out of these situations. I’ll be polite but at the same time I need to look after my mental health. Christmas Party season is coming up soon. Another reason why it’s great to work from home. No social pressures. Annoyingly I go to a lot of exhibition launches and sometimes thats the only time to chat to other photographers. It’s very hard work but it can be rewarding. If only everyone looked at the work in silence and then went to a quiet cafe to talk after or better yet all talk on Slack or WhatsApp in silence while walking around the exhibition. Not everyone attending is a confident social being and you could argue that face to face events aren’t 100% inclusive. Maybe every gallery needs a publicly accessible text-based communication channel to allow for discussion on the latest exhibition. Slack for Galleries? All that said I really did enjoy having a coffee and a chat with a mate from San Francisco the other week in a nice quiet cafe. A decent face to face conversation in a quiet environment is a fantastic thing for me. Incredibly rewarding.
Right after I was diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum I went to John Lewis and bought noise cancelling headphones. They are expensive but knowing I’m disabled I decided they were a medical necessity. I was right. I can now be pretty much anywhere and find peace with those headphones. At home I don’t have to put my music on loud to block out the neighbours. I can enjoy a quiet orchestral score on a safe volume and be calm. I can sit in a loud bar and do the same. They are life changing. They freed me from feeling like I wanted to stab things into my arms just to distract myself from the noise or walking out into traffic. I don’t use those words casually because being trapped by noise really really terrorises me. I’m lucky I can afford these expensive Sony WH-1000MX2 headphones. Not everyone can. The technology is getting cheaper though. Maybe one day it’ll be standard on all headphones. But for now if you’re austitic and face this same terror then try and find a way to get some noise cancelling headphones.
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I was diagnosed as autistic in the summer of 2018. I’m 41 as I write this and maybe half way through my life so I use the diagnosis to analyse where I’ve been and where I’m going.
Where have I been? I’ve been to computer world for a large portition of my life. I was given a C64 at the age of 6 and took to it like a Klingon to honour. I soaked up knowledge and coded till my late 20s. I loved it. I loved finding things online and making new programs. I loved that the internet provided me with an amazing space to play. I have a degree in Software Engineering, only a 2.1 so I’m no programming genius but still a degree non the less.
I look back on those days with my diagnosis and I can see autism at work. Primary school teachers would say “gifted” with computers. They would also say “shy” and “kept to himself”. When I got access to the internet I was running up phone bills and reading everything I could. So much cool stuff to explore. I guess you could call this “hyperfocus” which is often spoke about in the autistic community. The ability to block the world out and focus on a single task. That’s a great skill for a programmer to have.
I guess you could also say that computers were my special interest. Another autistic trait. Finding 2 or 3 things to be intensily interested in. People would say obssessed. Star Trek was also a special interest. Oh those technical guides to the Enterprise D. Yeah! But it was so handy mixing hyperfocusing and special interests together at the start of my career. It felt like I was totally on point. I was a conduit. Soaking up information, processing and applying it. I was a machine, learning.
Today I’m a photographer. Why? Well turns out I hated being in an office. I couldn’t stand being in a small room with lots of other people all being hugely irritating. No offence as I know it’s not their fault in any way. It was autism and sensory processing. I could feel every footstep in the office through my desk as the floor was quite wobbly. Even if I tried to block out the noise in the office I could still feel it through the desk as I worked. Then there was the daily challenge of small talk. None of the web design jobs I had were in a pure design compnay of like minded people. They were always odd spaces so I never really had people to talk to. At least people I could really talk to. It was hard work and I had no real idea why. Now I do.
Looking back through the autistic time lens I can also see that photography quickly became a special interest of mine. Yay autism. It was something technical I could read up on and really get stuck into. In 2 or 3 years I went from not understanding ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speeds to having one of the top guides on the internet on HDR and a decent audience on my, this, blog. 3 million hits a month back then. That’s probably down to autism and mixing speciali interests with hyperfocusing. I was really good at what I did back then. Annoyingly what I was doing was marmite photography called HDR (High Dynamic Range) and I guess I learned all the technical parts of photography so quick I missed the artistic side of it.
I really can see how autism has benefited me over those years. I often think maybe I should have stayed a programmer? Put me down in front of a screen and set me a task. Off I go. I have to remind myself that I’ve been a professional photographer now longer than a professional web designer. This really is who I am now and this path I’ve walked has led me here. I’m happy here. I think this is the better version of me. The doubt is there because I’ve soaked up the technicalities of photography and what I’m interested in now is the story telling aspect. I’m yet to understand how my autism helps now. I can’t hyperfocus or specaial interest in on people or architecture. It feels more like it hinders because to do the work I oddly enjoy I have to interact with people. I have to be out in the world. The noisy, loud, blinding, bright, confusing, messy complicated world. I have to be good with people. A “people person” if you will. Remember why I left my office job days behind? Yeah. People are the worst.
They’re not though. They’re amazing. There’s no greater feeling for me than to produce a good portrait of someone because it’s evidence that we connected, even for a moment, we connected and made this photograph. I may not be able to see how autism helps me at the moment but I can see how it hinders me. I have to worry about doing small talk while thinking about lighting a scene, ignoring all the sounds and lights around me, not worrying about how I’m being perceived by the subject and trying to make eye contact so I appear “normal”. You can’t practice this either. I can practice a landscape by going to a mountain on my own and photographing it over and over. But portraits? Nope. I have get right into the fear and anxiety and push through. Thats why doing portrait photography is incredibly important to me. Every portrait is an internal fight and every portrait is a reward.
About the same time as I received my autism diagnosis I received an email from the British Journal of Photography saying my portrait of Valerie, a woman from Port Sunlight, was to be shortlisted in their “Portrait of Britain” competition. I was in the top 200 from around 13,000 entries. The photograph was printed in a book next to Michelle Sank whose work I saw at the Open Eye Gallery back in 2007 and left an impression with me. It was an amazingly timed bit of news. I’m disabled. I’m autistic. I can’t do this. Should I be doing this? “Here’s an award for doing this. Keep going.”
So while I can’t see how autism is helping me today I can see how it’s got me here. If I can figure out how to better utilise it for the future maybe things will be ok.
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