{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Focus Trap","title":"206: Focus on Self-Trust","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2202,"description":"What if trusting yourself doesn’t mean knowing you’re right?\n\nIn this episode of The Focus Trap, Amy and Casey dig into self-trust — what it actually means, how it’s different from confidence, and what happens when you’re so busy looking for the right answer that you stop listening to your own. In photography, that can show up everywhere from deciding whether you like a photo to making creative choices, taking feedback, and figuring out which advice is actually useful.\n\nAmy talks about how 25 years of photography and business have given her evidence for what she knows works, even when her approach doesn’t make sense to everyone else. She also explains why critique isn’t about whether she personally likes your photograph, why she wants a photo to “have an opinion,” and how her mathematical approach to photography gives creativity a structure without deciding what someone else’s creative voice should be.\n\nCasey comes at self-trust from the perspective of learning: what happens when you’re building new skills while also trying not to outsource every decision to someone with more experience. She talks about external validation, noticing your first reaction before you override it, and learning to separate “this didn’t work” from “I can’t trust myself.”\n\nThey also talk about:\nWhy getting feedback is its own skill\nThe difference between pretty photographs and photographs with impact\nWhen experience helps self-trust — and when ignorance might help too\nTrusting your instincts while culling and editing\nWhy your first reaction to a photograph is useful information\nFinding the structure underneath “whimsy and sparkles”\n\nAlong the way, there are conversations about birds on sticks, compliment sandwiches, Amy’s deeply unfortunate mental image of a social media “hook,” whimsy and sparkles, and the idea that Amy and Casey might collectively add up to one functional wedding photographer. (They are not accepting bookings.)\n\n-------------------\nSubscribe so you don't miss the next...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/i9-t6bWJUqtrhE7cw5SbHysIc3-qKUQLGJnjtYCHCGA/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9iOGI5/NDA3NDdhOGVmNjRj/MmZmNmU2NjQ4Nzdk/ZGRlNi5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}