Rejection Therapy: A Hundred Days of 'No'
businessweek.com
businessweek.com
I tasked myself with taking a portrait of a stranger every day. It was terrifying to start with, walking up to complete strangers and asking to take a picture of them, and it took me 1-2h each day before finding the picture. By the time I wrapped up the project I took that down to 30 min, and didn't even break a sweat. My rejection rate also went way, way down, and I was able to get much better pictures than the "man, this is awwwwwkward" images from the beginning of the project.
The one thing to note though, is that (at least for me) the effects of this kind of "therapy" aren't permanent. Once you take away the regular stimulus of putting yourself out there, you fall back into your normal steady state.
The camera is capable of lending credibility though, you just have to step way outside of what people normally see on the streets. In my case the project was done with the Yashica Mat 124G and later the Hasselblad 500C/M. I do believe this has led to a lot more "yeses" than I would've gotten with a DSLR, especially since most images are shot around downtown Seattle where there is no shortage of DSLR-toting tourists.
In this case, I only ever used two lenses on the Hasselblad - 80mm and 150mm, the 80mm being the "kit" lens and very cheap to find bundled with a used body.
TCO for film cameras is inevitably high - you're working with equipment at least two decades old, if not 3 or 4. In all likelihood nothing will go wrong, but eventually something will, and repair costs are non-trivial. If you want to shoot vintage film cameras you should hunt down some reputable maintenance people online - going to your local camera shop is a good way to pay a lot for shoddy work.
Film is inevitably expensive, with 120 medium format weighing in around $4-6 a roll, at 12 exposures a roll. Not a lot of room to screw up ;) Processing depends on where you live - in Seattle there used to be some inexpensive and good labs, but I believe they have mostly shut down since I moved away. You can "hack" processing for C-41 films in various ways via Walgreens or Wal-Mart. They are incapable of processing medium format in-house but can send it out, and they won't charge extra, though you have little control over quality then.
With black and white you can always develop on your own, but that requires a bit of willingness to DIY.
If you have a lot of money to burn, the latest gen digital backs are close enough to 6x4.5 that the crop factor is fairly insignificant. Older digital backs aren't even close, so you're shooting a substantial crop from the original intended image.
There is no such thing as a 6x6 sensor, unfortunately.
I'm still hoping someone makes a practical large format back at some point.
There are also a lot of other cues that determine how likely someone is to say yes, and if so, how awkward they will be. After a while you learn to spot people who (due to typical Seattle politeness) will probably say yes, but be uncomfortable in doing so. I ended up avoiding them for the most part.
I don't want to sound like I'm knocking your method because I'm not and lord knows I'm in need of some serious rejection therapy too and haven't done anything close to what you did. I think that's a pretty cool project and I might try it except I won't tell people why I'm asking the question.
It absolutely does. That said, the guy in the article could also very much say something like "I have a personal project where I make an outlandish request every day" and probably gotten more "yes"es.
It's all in the intent - I wasn't out there strictly to get rejected, I was out there to take some cool pictures for a project, and learn a few things about cold-approaching people and handling failure. It wasn't intended as rejection therapy, though it did seem like that in the beginning ;)
I have tried the techniques in the book successfully but never went the full length of getting anyone to sign a release form. Did you?
The pictures from this project on your blog are great! What software did you use for the gallery? It works nicely (although it's a little slow?)
I really should update.
Five years ago I worked fine dining as a server: I could talk to anyone about anything.
Now I work in a cubicle with minimal interaction. I am a social recluse: if I go to a bar, I bring a book.
About to start hard-selling one-to-one my software. A little nerve-wracking. Just took a trip to Baja with no spanish language skills. That's made me feel a lot better about my capacity to just "get out there".
The most recent video on Jia's site is of him asking to race someone. He walks up to a high schooler and his personal trainer explains himself and asks to race one of them. As soon as Jia mentions he is a blogger the trainer without making a direct reference to it casually unzips his jacket to reveal a sweatshirt with the name and logo of his company on it.
It tickled me and made me strangely proud that now because of this man's quick opportune thinking and the happenstance that someone decided to write an article about Jia, likely thousands more people than have ever before will click through and visit http://rwa-texas.com/ .
Given that some of us are less creative than others and aren't particularly interested in repeating the same handful of things mentioned in the article a dozen times each, do any of the fine, good-looking folks of Hacker News any additional suggestions? Would anyone else be interested in undertaking the same challenge?
Jason, despite average looks and wit would literally talk to any girl who would even make eye contact with him. He'd get right into it, chatting about this and that, using the dumbest pickup lines. His intentions were almost always to just get a number so he wasn't that creepy. He was fearless when it came to walking right up to a girl and just trying to get them to talk to him, no matter how many times they'd ignore him, tease him, etc. A lot of people enjoyed his confidence. He truthfully didn't come across as a jerk or anything, so anyone that would give him a few moments, might end up enjoying at least the conversation, if nothing else.
I remember chatting with him about it after a few nights out, and he just said how quickly he learned to get over rejection after just experiencing it; making the point that it really wasn't THAT bad, almost making a joke out of it. And truth be told, by the end of college, I am pretty convinced he ended up with more numbers in his phone than any of us other guys combined, for whatever that's worth.
At Work:
- Ask a random coworker to lunch
- Ask for a raise
- Ask for a random day off
- Ask for a new chair
On the street:
- Ask any girl (or guy, or whatever your preference is) to coffee
- Ask people to take a photo of them doing a specific thing (same each day or change it up but it just can't be a photo of them anywhere doing anything)
- Ask people for a dollar
- Ask a homeless person to borrow a quarter
Other:
I just ran out of ideas. But they're everywhere. I think the problem might be that we have the ideas but don't want them to come out because we're still shy or afraid to even think of a situation where there's a chance of rejection.
Some questions for those who have tried this kind of thing:
1. Obviously you should conceal your camera. Any suggestion on how to do this? I'm thinking of using my iPod's camera. Put in my shirt's pocket while the camera is on with the lens facing forward? Or use special camera for this purpose?
2. Is it legal to record and publish it on YouTube? How to make it legal? Blur the person's face?
As someone who worked retail for a number of years, unless the store was packed with people I wouldn't have flat-out refused him a weird request, I probably just would've escalated it. Touring warehouses is unlikely, though, because of health and safety restrictions. But the doughnuts one is perfectly reasonable even without asking a manager.
You probably ask people for things every day that make them uncomfortable. Getting used to that sort of repulsed reaction is probably harder than dealing with the actual 'no', so I think it's an important part of the project.
http://www.entresting.com/blog/100-days-of-rejection-therapy...
Concentratedly going out and asking people for stuff is a great way to a) prove to yourself that rejection isn't all that bad and b) prove that sometimes (often) you won't get rejected at all.
Conditioning works. It works in martial arts - Krav Maga and MMA both have variants on the "stand there and get hit" drill, and it does indeed teach you to be less afraid of being hit. It works in the PUA world, and generally in becoming better at talking to the opposite sex. And it works in rejection therapy. Do something that's likely to get you rejected a lot, do it for a fair while, and you'll come out of it less afraid of doing things that might result in a rejection.
We don't know the details, but that's time that she should be spending with her baby.