Nobody likes a clone.

A clone is a copy, a non-authentic ‘ringer’ that has no soul, no guts, no passion, no quirks or guilts or pleasures.

And it is way, way too easy to be a clone. Just copy something or someone and do that as you.

But it is you.

Case in point.

A very talented media person who I work with spent many, many hours researching her WP theme. Upon deciding on it, she spent many more hours customizing it to be a perfect “magazine” for her publication. With the added coding required for special posts, it is a very nicely done site.

Another one of the people that worked with us saw her site and asked a bazillion questions about the custom post types and what was done to create such a marvelous looking site.

Then went and got the same theme and built the same custom post types for a nearly cloned site. Although the content is different, the look and feel is identical… and this caused a problem.

The person who had built the original site was miffed that she had been ‘ripped off’ and the person who had appropriated her site felt that since it was a WP theme, all was fair.

Both are actually right. It is indeed a commercial theme – and there is no copyright or proprietary ownership of custom post types and fonts and such. And she wasn’t really ripped off, but more like appropriated.

But what is inherent in the original site is a feeling of authenticity, of originality. Something only found when you are on the front lines of trying to make some goddam thing work – and work well for you and your specialized needs.

And there is a feeling of a win as you wrangle those problems and shards of ideas into something cohesive that is exactly what you wanted.

Copying it, however, is simply copying it. “Command C / Command V” is not a win. It is a non authentic approach that has no passion or desire or plan. It’s a no heart, no guts approach.

Now for sure others who do not know of the existence of the original site will NEVER be any more aware, and the clone site does indeed look pretty nice – but not because of anything special the clone did, but all to do with that original site designer busting her ass.

After it all settles, something has been lost.

The struggle for excellence has been sidestepped in favor of the damn “easy button” and what could have been discovered was not. To think that someone else’s approach to something would so perfectly match your own that it is a slam dunk is to miss the idea of unique and authentic.

He needed to struggle with a theme… hell, even that theme. He needed to stay up late and look at font combinations again and again and again to find the ones that were so perfectly his that they screamed at him from every H1 tag. If you have never fought through a design struggle, then you will never learn how to fight through one.

And you just may have to do that one day. Especially if you are a, you know, designer.

Photography is very much the same way. Finding out what actions a photographer in your town uses may be wonderful for that imitation phase (school/beginner – NOT in business yet), but by the time we are into innovation and creating an authentic vision, that is simply not acceptable anymore.

How could the ‘style’ of a forty seven year old mother of three who photographs children in natural light wearing old people’s clothes’ be the style of a 20 year old hipster in a NYC loft working with ‘alternative’ talent? C’mon… it may be a rare coincidence, but very rare.

You must speak from your authentic self every time you make a photograph, chat with a client, invoice a gig, post a blog article or – and this is important – talk about another photographer.

Let me make a bold statement here: Authentic people are not petty people. Authentic people are not jealous or envious. Nor are they gossips or naysayers. They spend their precious time making their authentic work, not disparaging or stealing the work of others. That is truly a waste of time and effort and results in a badly made clone if it results in anything at all.

And clones are easy to spot, actually. There is a bit of lifelessness in their eyes, they are not fun to be around and they cannot dance the Tango.

Which is an important part of all life on planet earth. Trust me on this.

We are oftentimes presented with opportunities to simply cut and paste something else and call it our own. And there may be times when we are tempted because of the banality of what it is. But think long and hard about what that does to YOUR creative muscles.

It cheats them from a solid workout. It is taking your creatives to the gym all excited to work out and then spending the afternoon in the doughnut store next door. Too easy. No challenge.

Do it once… and perhaps no harm done. Do it twice and we are now seeing the beginnings of a trend. Do it a couple more times and it is now a defining way of doing business and you are no longer pushing for excellence.

In the consumer side of photography we have seen some major players lose a lot of their credibility from that ol’ cut and paste habit. Big names at the top of their game for reasons that are simply lost on me figured they could steal a little snippet here, a line or two there… who would notice or even care.

Somebody noticed. A LOT of people cared. It was a matter of character, or the lack thereof, that was on display that made a mockery of their claims of authentic creativity.

Look. Being authentic is being YOU. It is owning up to your mistakes, challenges and losses. And to pretend that there were none will always bring us back to the pain of being found out as a putz.

I could go on and on about being authentic, uniquely you and how important it is. But I think you may have the idea.

Being the best you can be is far better than trying to be the best someone else can be.