Do You Photograph With a Group or Go Solo?

Last week, a friend posted on social media about the difference between photographing with friends and when out solo. Serendipitously, I also read an article about a recent study showing that Americans in general have fewer friends than they had in the past. That got me thinking about how I personally participate in photography when in a group or solo.

I would like to mention the study. One of the interesting and maybe alarming statistics was a Gallup survey was that from 1990 to 2024, people report having fewer friends. They further break that down by education level achieved. In that time period the percentage saying they had no friends rose from 3% to 24% among people with high school or less education. In that same group, those that reported at least six close friends dropped from 49% to 17%. In the Bachelor degree or higher group, they went from 2% to 10% reporting no close friends, and from 45% to 33% having at least six friends. The entire study is worth reading and outlines a troubling trend.

With that study in mind and the prompt from a friend’s social media post, my mind wandered to how influencers use photography to portray the outdoors. The most popular photos are often of the lone influencer standing isolated in the vast outdoors.

It is hard to say if that correlation is related to people having fewer friends, or maybe more likely is that influencers live a lifestyle that requires travel and not many people can travel that much. In that case, they may end up having to pose for their own photos or have their travel companion pose. Regardless, those photos depict people outdoors in a lonely way.

For me, I get almost all of my photography group interaction via teaching photo workshops. When I do go out with friends, it’s half about photography and half about hanging around with friends, but I find that I do my best work when solo.

One of the reasons that I do better when I’m solo is that I don’t have that social interaction taking up part of my mind, and I can fully engage with the activity. Another reason is that I’m often more able to reach a flow state when I’m photographing alone.

Flow state is when you’re fully focused on the activity at hand, without distractions, at the peak of your performance, and you enter an altered state of consciousness that allows you to perform at a higher level. Often you lose any understanding of self-consciousness. For me, I have a busy brain that is always trying to impress its thoughts on me, but in a flow state those thoughts disappear.

Flow state is more commonly associated with sports than the arts, but I find that when I’m at the very edge of my ability to create photography that I can slip into a flow state easily.

If you haven’t experienced flow, it’s hard to describe. As strange as it sounds, it feel like you the person is gone, and the activity is fully engrossing. In this state, it often feels like the photos just make themselves. I don’t have to think about what I’m going to take a photo of or how I’m going to photograph it, it just happens. The photos present themselves as if they were always there to find.

I’ve been asked if I could teach a class on how to achieve this state, and I don’t think that I can. I think it comes about with practice. I feel like you have to have a full command of the craft of photography, and you have to have mastered your equipment. The second that you have to fumble with gear, such as figuring out how to assemble a filter, you’re out of the state. If you have the muscle memory of assembling filters, then you stay in the state. Lots of practice is key.

While I don’t mind being alone and I enjoy it, I can understand that it might not be appealing for everyone. I wish there was a way for me to slip into that flow state while around more people, but in almost every case where I’ve been in that state I’ve been alone, except for when I used to ice and rock climb. When I was climbing I could reach that state. But otherwise if I’m around people, it’s enough of a pull on my consciousness to keep me out of flow.

It’s worthwhile photographing alone once or twice to see if you can reach that state, or maybe you reach it when around people. That’d be cool.

Until next time

I hope you enjoyed my musings on flow and friends.

I had a cancellation on my Spring Waterfall Workshop. It’s May 2 to May 4th. You can register here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/bryanhanselphotography/1401286

Before I sign off, I’ll mention that I just completed a 30-day map making challenge. I’m going to leave you with a map that I’m still working on from the challenge. It’s been challenging. I’m trying to reproduce the look of a map from Minnesota State Geologist Newton Horace Winchell’s trip to the Grand Marais area in 1879. I have a lot of work left, but it has been a fun project so far.

That’s a wrap, and I’ll see you again in two weeks.