by C J Chilvers
Teaching can also be the best way to learn more about something you’ve been practicing for years.
Most of us have learned something about photography that’s unique. A lot of us have an audience somewhere, no matter how small. Putting the two together will make photography a lot better.
12
Roll Your Own
There will always be another online service begging for you to share your photos. They ask you to trade privacy, image rights, and image quality for the privilege of putting your work in front of a lot of viewers with little friction.
Not enough photographers assess the benefits of using these services before jumping right in to the next new one that comes along.
Most of these services will not help you tell a story, effectively edit, or showcase your skills in the best possible light. If you wish to tell a story to the public and avoid the constantly changing, often-onerous terms of service, you need to own the experience of viewing your images.
Take advantage of social networking to call attention to your work and communicate with your fans, but always bring your viewer back to a place you can tailor to create the experience you want your viewers to have.
Don’t offer your best work to an environment that changes with the whims of a company that almost certainly doesn’t have the interests of your viewers at heart.
13
Should You Have a Portfolio?
“Just another couple of snowflakes in the big art establishment blizzard.” — Hugh MacLeod
I don’t have a portfolio. I don’t want one. It serves no purpose I can justify.
I realize why people want it. It’s so easy to create an online portfolio today, it’s become the gold standard for judging a photographer’s worth. Everybody can have one, so everybody should.
But what are you trying to accomplish by assembling a portfolio, online or offline?
Is it attention? If so, that’s probably the worst strategy. If you have great stories to tell, there are far better venues for getting attention than a portfolio.
Is it credibility? That’s always a losing battle. The closer you get to your goal, the less you innovate. Trends become your friends.
Is it clients? You’re trying to be a pro, which is fine, but then we’re talking about commerce, not necessarily art. There’s a different set of rules to apply.
Critics will gladly pick apart your portfolio to compensate for their lack of judgment. I don’t see a reason to play by their rules.
14
You Have a Reputation
Marketing phrases like “personal brand” come and go and are mostly the work of marketers who believe that to own something, you must rename it.
Go back decades before such buzzwords pervaded our lives, and you’ll find the foundation of this concept was more simply called your “reputation.”
A good reputation comes from your work and your interactions with your community.
You have one, whether you want it or not. Whether you care is up to you and your goals as a photographer.
A good reputation is not derived from marketing “hacks” deployed on prospects to promote yourself.
Unfortunately, it often seems that those who are most obsessed about building their personal brands are the first to forget about their reputations.
15
Artists Thrive on Constraints
“The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” — Orson Welles
Every new, professional-grade camera aims to remove the photographer another step from the mechanical processes of the camera to “focus on the image.”
This has the opposite effect.
Creativity is always enhanced by a constraint. This is true in filmmaking, music, painting, writing, and even photography.
How many times has one of your favorite musicians, whose best album was produced in days using half-borrowed equipment, gone on to spend a year in the studio on their next album, only to produce a mediocre (at best) result?
How many times has a talented filmmaker been given unlimited funds and technical possibilities—only to produce a Jar Jar Binks?
A lesser camera makes you think. Thought is better than automation in art. Automation leads to commoditization. Your art becomes easily replaceable or worse, forgettable.
The resurgence of film among younger photographers may well turn out to be just a fad, but the reason it makes sense to so many people is the feeling of enhanced creativity it fuels. If you load black-and-white film into your camera, your whole world becomes black and white until a new roll is loaded. That’s a very useful constraint.
If you carry a camera with a fixed lens, you must get close to your subjects. That may be the most beneficial of constraints.
Constraints become a necessity because your brain seeks the path of least resistance. Your brain craves the automation. It’s less painful. Your brain would love to produce safe, bland fluff. When we enforce a constraint, we throw a boulder into the path of least resistance and force the brain to create a path less traveled.
Your creativity is what makes your images unique. Stop stifling it for an easier “workflow.”
Comfort is where art goes to die.
16
Should You Pay for Constraints?
Should you pay for constraints? Should you pay a lot for constraints?
Leica owners insist that you can and should. I don’t agree.
You can buy your way out of a problem, but it doesn’t mean you’ve found the solution. It definitely doesn’t mean you’ve found the creative solution. It may only mean you’ve bought your way out of creativity.
Constraints come in all price ranges, and the likelihood that your specific set of constraints is perfectly met with the most expensive camera on the market is pretty low.
17
Find Your Balance
“That’s the disease you have to fight in any creative field—ease of use.” — Jack White
The more fun something is to use, the more you’ll use it. Creativity is spurred when there’s just enough pain to prompt thought, but just enough fun to keep you clicking the shutter.
I’d go back to pro-level gear tomorrow if I thought I could rely on my brain to consistently deliver better ideas with automated equipment. That just isn’t the way my brain works. If given the chance to be lazy, it will. It’ll tell me to use the equipment to produce the same kinds of images I’ve seen in all the books. I suspect that’s true of most people.
That said, gear is not the enemy.
Surrendering creativity for automation is the enemy. Looking for features instead of benefits is the enemy. Not doing the work is the enemy.
Every photographer has to find that boundary between the pain and the fun to be at their most prolific. When’s the last time you went looking for yours?
18
Go Amateur
“100% of humans should practice an art. Probably 0% should try to make money off it.” — Austin Kleon
Photography is one of the most popular hobbies on the planet, but you’d never know it from most photography content. It’s treated as a profession, where the goal is making money, buying more expensive gear, or getting prints into galleries around the world. You’re being enticed to “go pro,” but that’s just not realistic for the vast majority of photographers. In reality, most photographers could benefit from going amateur.
At the time of this book’s publication, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calculated the median pay for a professional photographer at $34,070.00 per year with an estimated 6% decline in jobs over the next 10 years. Most of those who choose to make a living with photography do not make much of a living.
New photographers are dipping their toes in the professional market all the time, making photography a commodity in areas of the market where creativity has been neglected. Some veterans have stepped up their game in response, most have not. The result is less opportunity for average photographers.
I’m not here to discourage
you. No doubt, some of you are professionals already, and some of you have made a few bucks here and there.
But the vast majority of you are not professionals and never will be. Many publications and professionals teaching on the side are hoping you never realize that. Most are pushing a content drug on you. The goal is to treat you as a professional, tempt you to buy like one, and keep you coming back for more. This robs you of time and resources better spent on making the pictures you love.
On your deathbed, will you regret not having made a few extra bucks on your photography? It’s more likely you will regret not creating more art.
Stop buying into the assumption that your goal is to make money from photography. Your goal is to create photographs that you love.
For a professional photographer, the photograph is a product. For an amateur photographer, the photograph is a byproduct of a life well lived.
Concentrate on making your images remarkable, instead of marketable. If you photograph what you love to photograph, without regard for money, you’ll create better images, which could lead to the possibility of money. Just don’t count on the money.
19
The Pros Agree
Professional photographers tend to embrace the philosophy of this book much more quickly than amateurs. How can this be?
It doesn’t seem to make sense, but in the email I’ve received, most of the support for “lesser photography” has come from professionals. The skeptics are almost always amateurs.
It’s very common for a professional to say, “I’ve already scaled down and started experimenting.” It’s equally common to hear an amateur say, “I’m still buying that fancy new camera, but I will really think about these principles in the future.”
It only makes sense when you consider what a cutthroat business professional photography has become.
Only professionals who recognize the value of creativity to differentiate their work are likely to thrive. Those who take the risk, reap the reward.
20
How to Make Money with Your Photography
Are you still not content to remain an amateur? Are you still trying to figure out a way to make a few bucks from your photography? Believe it or not, there are two ways to make money with photography that will never die out, even as the rest of the industry mummifies.
The first is to be the absolute best photographer in the world in a niche that makes a lot of money for someone else.
The second is far more attainable.
What the world needs more of now, and for the foreseeable future, is more people with great ideas who just happen to be great photographers.
Visual storytelling was the best way to sell an idea 10,000 years ago, and nothing will change that for at least the rest of your lifetime.
21
Spend on Images, Not Gear
“When everyone has access to the same tools, then having a tool isn’t much of an advantage.” — Seth Godin
The lust for gear is pervasive. It’s the fuel that turns any hobby into an industry. In photography, that desire for the latest gadgets has provided the incentive for innovation. There’s no doubt it serves an economic purpose. But it only serves to harm creativity.
We need to decide what is going to consume our time, money and attention: our cameras or our images.
If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you already own some kind of camera. Inevitably, you’re going to feel the pull from ads, catalogs, eBay, and fellow photographers to upgrade. How much sense that makes depends on your goals as a photographer.
You could buy that new prime lens you’ve been lusting after, or you could buy a plane ticket to a place you’ve never been and have enough left over for a travel guide. Which would add more to your life experience and to the diversity of your image library?
There are plenty of very fashionable photographers with little in their images to show for it.
For the vast majority of photographers—those who don’t rely on their cameras for their income—a simple, usable and pocketable camera is more than enough when you know how to use it properly. Don’t expect to see that notion in your typical photography publication. It may anger an advertiser.
Lesser cameras often get a bad rap, simply because there’s less money involved, but don’t overlook their benefits. They can be used in more places, and without eliciting the reaction of security officials. They’re less obtrusive when shooting candids. They can be stashed and retrieved easily in a pocket or plastic bag during bad weather (perhaps making you more likely to venture out for such photography). They have simpler controls, making them more likely to be used fully. Most importantly, they allow the user to always have a camera ready for unexpected opportunities.
Not every small camera can produce poster-sized prints with tack-sharp detail yet. However, most modern photos will never be printed at any size.
Real output is judged by the reaction it evokes in the viewer. Emotions are not measurable in print size or pixels. Your spending more on pixels may make a camera dealer very happy, but it may not do anything for your viewer.
22
The Perfect Camera for You
“Some people love the tools more than the outcomes.” — Mark Hurst
There will always be some amateur photographers who refuse to concede that spending on images, not cameras, will improve their photography.
They tend to fall into two camps:
“I use what’s appropriate for the kind of photography I shoot.”
How many times have you loved a photo because it was “appropriate”?
You say you only have a compact camera and you want to be a bird photographer? That sounds like an incredibly interesting creative problem worth solving. Or you could throw money at the problem and end up with bird photos that look like everyone else’s, if you’re lucky.
“Gear is part of the fun of photography. It makes me want to shoot more.”
Gear was a tremendously fun part of photography for me until I realized gear wasn’t about the image, it was about the gear.
Do not attach emotion to the tool. Save it for the images.
The image must come first, unless you want to be a collector or a maker of camera equipment—and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. Honestly, when I used to say this kind of thing, I just wanted a particular lens or camera and was looking for an excuse.
A Buyer’s Guide
There may come a time when you actually have to buy a camera of some kind. So, here are few rules that may help you select the best one for you:
Check to make sure you don’t already have a camera. They’re everywhere, and in everything, so you probably do.
Discover your pain point. Everyone will have a different pain point—the point at which the brain has to take over from the equipment to produce a desired result. Find that pain point by borrowing and renting cameras.
Buy a tank. If possible, buy the camera that best rejects the notion of planned obsolescence.
23
Is Total Automation the Future of Photography?
Yes, and that may serve artists particularly well.
Even though anyone can microwave a frozen dinner, what we really want (and pay good money for) is a dinner prepared by someone who knows what they’re doing, has a vision, and doesn’t take shortcuts.
Automation in gear will always sell better than the prospect of having to work with a creative problem. Welcome this with open arms. There’s no better way to differentiate your work from the masses than to wrestle with a problem everyone else is avoiding—and win.
24
Tell a Story
“We’ve got to stop thinking of ourselves as photographers. We’re publishers.” — John Stanmeyer
Why does every major photography award seem to go to the same few outlets: National Geographic, The New York Times and a handful of interchangeable lifestyle publications?
Why aren’t photography how-to publications, which feature the best work of the most-c
elebrated photographers on the planet, recognized with awards and loved by the same numbers of readers? They feature the best photography has to offer, yet they’re read by far fewer and usually as an impulse.
Countless photographers teach you technique and show off their portfolios, but National Geographic and a handful of journalistic organizations still bring the most recognition. What do they know that the millions of contenders don’t?
Photography that is technically proficient is no longer enough to inspire. You must tell a story. And while you’re telling a story, don’t limit yourself to just images.
For years, photographers have been wisely imploring writers to learn to create compelling images to enhance their storytelling. The same argument must be made in reverse. Photographers must learn to write to enhance their storytelling or find a writer to collaborate with. The two skills are inescapably linked now.
