I have been quite busy this past two weeks. Many, many distractions taking me away from the work – and lots of work to be taken away from. It has produced a quagmire of challenges. I rarely miss a deadline, and I work very hard for my clients. Even the ones I don’t work for very often.
So we put things like eating casually and sleep on the secondary priority lest and keep on plugging. And before anyone thinks I am complaining… no way. I love it. I hate it when I am not busy. I want to cram as much fun/work/creativity into every single moment as possible.
There are times when I wonder where it is all going. Will I be where I think I should be when I get there? Will I at least know I am there?
Heck… I sometimes wonder where ‘there’ is.
I started photography for reasons that may not be as obvious as one would think. I was bored. I had been traveling as a drummer (hated on the road with the band – love on the road for photography) and the long days in hotels waiting for that 4 hours of fun in the evening took its toll. I tried to talk the hotels in letting me set my drums up in the room to practice… but, alas, there was much discussion of the loudness of the drums and some drivel about other guests… Yeah. Whatever.
My photography began to improve about the time I talked my way into being an art director at a pretty cool little design firm in SoCal. There were opportunities to hire photographers and I got my first taste of professional shooting on the sets of jobs I was art directing.
I fell in love with the whole thing. Independence, the models hanging around, the cool studio environments, the models hanging around, all that great gear and ‘toys’, the models hanging around and of course the photography as a lifestyle.
There was the added benefit of models hanging around, but I digress. 😉
There were long long nights and days of working on my portfolio and working on my day job. I made friends with many of the shooters and would stop by and do some light assisting and art directing for them. I wanted to learn everything there was about the world of commercial photography.
I decided to leave my day gig and become a full time photographer. Hell… I was gonna knock LA out.
That, as they say, was the plan.
Reality was that there were a heck of a lot of very, VERY, talented photographers in LA. Many with books better than mine. Many with track records and tears and lots more experience. It was an eye-opening experience to say the least.
Some say that motivation can be achieved by visualizing your outcome. I would add that sheer terror can also motivate one. Trust me.
Swallowing pride, I started assisting and that is when it began to really play out for my photography. I kind of got an idea of what I didn’t want to do, and what I did want to do became more clearer.
One comes to that when surrounded by work at every turn. Food, lifestyle, portrait, fashion, beauty, architectural, editorial, still life and product and … well. Let’s say that every job as a freelance assistant in LA in the 80’s was quite different than the previous gig.
I began to see what I thought I could do.
And I focused on it like a laser beam. Beauty work, some fashion, still life, and editorial portraiture. Yeah… that would be me. A studio in Phoenix and one in NY, then Chi found me on red-eyes once a week or more. By that time I had moved back to Phoenix from LA. Some chaps had decided that what was mine was actually theirs so they ripped off the doors to the studio and helped themselves to what had taken 6 years to amass – on assistants wages.
I was teaching at a small private school, working the Phoenix market and also working and testing in NY.
Fun? Oh, man… I could not even begin to describe how much fun it was.
It was also pretty unorganized… I just wanted to work. I wanted that next gig so bad. If I wasn’t shooting, I was preparing or showing my book or testing or printing or learning something new. Heady days.
Over time I re-focused my work to include art direction again. A Photo-Designer.
I wont go into the next decade or so at this point, but I will tell you how many opportunities I missed from being focused on the short instead of the long. A lot. I didn’t have a true “body of work” as Selina says… and that was/is something very important. My work ranged from still life and corporate to fashion and beauty.
The next gig is not as important as the right gig. It really isn’t. The right choices, the right vision and the right shoot will propel you on the road you have chosen. But if there is no map, it is sometimes a short-lived run.
It would have been nice to have a GPS unit for my photography… I may have actually known where I was going instead of finding myself there. See, when you simply ‘find yourself there’ you can miss a lot of why you got there, and where to go next. And that was me – big time.
I have to note that I am not whining… just looking back and seeing where the enthusiasm I had may have served me better if there had been a long term focus to it.
These days I meet a lot of shooters who are just like me. It is sometimes easy to see your own shortcomings in others. They are shooting for the love of it all, but without a sense of direction as to where all that shooting will lead them.
Spending every waking moment shooting ‘glamour’ for non-paying models may seem like a lot of fun… but what is the end game. Shooting weddings because it is lucrative only, and hating everyone one of them helps you how? Simply making the money? No… it has done nothing but increase your wedding business without any help at all to the commercial. When ‘making the jump’ time comes what will you be ready for? Commercial… or more weddings?
Here are a few ideas I have for making your own Photography GPS:
- Shoot a lot of things and find what it is that you like to do, and I mean REALLY like to do.
- Look for photographers that do what you want to do and find out what makes them successful
- Do not worry about what you shoot – self censorship is a creative loser – but make sure that you know what to do with what you are shooting
- When you think of what you are doing, ask if it is what you want to be doing 5 years from now. Or 10.
- Ask advice, but filter accordingly. There are many people who want to “help” but in actuality have agendas that may not be in your best interest. Identify them and judge the help you get accordingly.
- Clark Terry, the wonderful jazz trumpeter, has a great plan for musicians that works well for photographers: “Imitate. Assimilate. Innovate.” Yeah. Do that.
- Plan your work in small bite size chunks (months/years) and also in more of a “Happy Meal” way – (decade) – and see how you massage that plan as you go. At least with a map, you will know when you strayed off the path – and why.
- Be comfortable with change. “Recalculating” is not necessarily a bad thing to hear. It doesn’t mean a wrong direction, it means a choice of a new one.
Personally I love my TomTom and after it was stolen in Austin, I bought a replacement right away. I still like to read maps, but the accuracy of the GPS is really amazing.
We need to know where we are going with our work. I think it makes the work stronger, and I think it makes us easier to market. If we show we are in charge of where we are going, the confidence others have in us can grow as well.
BTW… if you are not involved in Project 52, you should check it out. A creative approach to creating a portfolio for YOU presented one assignment per week. A holistic/synergistic approach to commercial photography.
Follow me on Twitter, and hang at my Facebook page if you are so inclined. You can learn more about me at About.me. We also do lighting workshops all over the country.
Wow. What an amazing post.
This right here: “The next gig is not as important as the right gig. It really isn’t. The right choices, the right vision and the right shoot will propel you on the road you have chosen. But if there is no map, it is sometimes a short-lived run.” Brilliant. Right > next.
I appreciate the steps you posted as well, especially “be comfortable with change.” Years ago I was heavily insulted for just about any change I made, and some of that lingers now, though I am better at ignoring the insults. Some people see change and think change = failure. I don’t see it that way but what if it does. So what? Just like Michael Jordan said, “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”
Good post–I like the idea of having a sense of direction, but accepting that sense is not “absolute.”
“…Michael Jordan said, “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”
You gotta take the shot to make the shot! True.
Hank Aaron, the great baseball player held the all time home runs record.
He also held the all time strike out record for a while.
Gotta swing if you are gonna hit it out of the park.
Way too many people wait to take the shot… looking for that perfect angle that will eliminate any chance of failure.
It never comes.
“Imitate. Assimilate. Innovate.”
I’ve never heard that quote before – I absolutely love it. Thanks!
Great post (not that we would expect any different 🙂 ). Very personal, very honest.
Navigating the photo business is tricky, because it’s a very challenging combination of art and commerce. What we love most about it is the art, but we can’t keep doing it as a lifestyle without the commerce. And what is good business isn’t always the most artistic and vice versa. So the challenge is finding that very narrow and winding path between these two rocks. Staying true enough to your vision and not selling out to commerce altogether, that you can afford to travel the path until it becomes clear and a bit wider.
One thing I increasingly see is that folks don’t consider it a journey. They see the point they are at now, and they punch the destination into the GPS, but they’re missing that there’s quite a few turns in between. Your point about “filtering the advice” is key – much of the advise is either about the start or the end of the journey, they tell you very little about the next intersection you might encounter. Mostly because the people giving advice tend to live at either end of the route, not in the middle.
But I would be cautious about the GPS analogy. While I think GPS’s have prevented a lot of folks from getting lost (although on occasion they’ve stranded travelers in the wild), they’re also a bit like the ‘P’ on the camera dial. They’ve allowed people w/ limited sense for direction to give up the responsibility of reading a map and figuring it out, and they tend to make people myopic to the start, finish, and the next turn, rather than thinking about the route as a whole.
And where that hits home is in your quote that the next gig is not as important as the right gig. Well, true. But as Jordan said, if you don’t take the shot you can’t make it. So first you need to have a next gig, so you have a chance to have the right gig. But every single time you should evaluate that gig against your map. Sometimes you take it to stay in the game, but you’ll know exactly what you have to do to improve your chance that the next one will also be the right one.
Yep to your points.
“While I think GPS’s have prevented a lot of folks from getting lost (although on occasion they’ve stranded travelers in the wild), they’re also a bit like the ‘P’ on the camera dial.”
So true. I have always used my GPS as a final destination finder, but lots of times I will simply try alternate routes to the end. “Reconfiguring” is heard a lot in my auto.
“And where that hits home is in your quote that the next gig is not as important as the right gig.”
I do not mean to imply that one should not shoot every gig that one needs to in order to manage a cash flow, it is what we then do with that work. Not every shot is portfolio worthy. Not every gig is as important to the bigger picture as others may be. Leveraging ones work to the next step means that we have to know what we are wanting to achieve so we know what to leverage.
Very interesting post and it really resonated with me. I’m kinda where you where a few years back.
It’s good to know that it does work out for some people in the end. Hopefully me as well!!
It works out.
Keep moving and start to look farther down the road. I would tell you to check google maps, but alas, they don’t work all that well for us photographers. heh.
A big thank you is in order. THANK YOU!
Thank you for this: “Shoot a lot of things and find what it is that you like to do, and I mean REALLY like to do.” and
“Do not worry about what you shoot – self censorship is a creative loser – but make sure that you know what to do with what you are shooting”
I’ve finally made the decision to pursue photography seriously (albeit while working my 9-5), and the transition from hobbyist has been, to say the least, difficult. Finding EXACTLY what I want to shoot is proving to be more difficult than I thought, but after your bullet points, I feel better about taking my time to find what I really LOVE to shoot.
One thing I would add is not to compare your own experience with another photographer’s. I’ve beaten myself up, placed doubt on my talents, and have contemplated quitting just because I wasn’t in the same place (as far as getting work, feedback, etc) as another beginning photographer. Your journey is your own.
And I WILL check out Project 52!
“One thing I would add is not to compare your own experience with another photographer’s.”
Oh my. That is so true. We cannot ever make the mistake of thinking our success has to be matched to someone else. It is great to have mentors and models, but we focus on our own work is far more important.