What does it mean to be a ‘Great’ Photographer[/Insert Passion Here]
What does it mean to be a ‘Great’ Photographer[/Insert Passion Here]
Or a great anything for that matter?
I’m sure not everyone thinks this way, but the few things I’ve been truly passionate about in life I’ve always wanted to be ‘great’ at. Or at least pretty friggin’ good! True, I am almost compulsively competitive, but having worked with so many professionals just starting out in their careers I’ve seen that it’s a fire that’s shared by vast numbers of photographers around the world. It was the same with sports and it’s the same with almost everything in life.
But what does it actually mean?
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It’s in the genetics
Just the glowing hint of a passion really. When I was 16 I bought my first DSLR, actually that was my first camera of any kind. I come from an incredibly hard working family, with the most inspiring parents you could imagine in so many ways. They are two people who I respect as much as it’s possible to respect anyone in this world. But they aren’t creative. Sports is in my genetics, I’m not saying I have a professional pedigree for sports, but my Uncle was a county champion swimmer, my mum was a county champion hurdler and my grandfather was heavily involved in sports.
So, as a kid, I wanted to be an athlete. I trained hard, I won county and regional championships and -for my age – I was ranked top 3 in the UK for a long time. I wanted to be great. I was in the pool for hours on end, fitting in training before and after school (DURING school in my later years when skipping classes was an all too tempting possibility). I still take a certain amount of pride in the fact that my attendance at school was just 32% during my last two years. I put in the hours, I hit my 10,000 hours of training which by many schools of thought made me a ‘master’ at my chosen passion.
But I wasn’t great. I was very good, I achieved things that many young hopefuls will never do and I’m extremely grateful for that. Still, it wasn’t quite enough to get me to where I wanted to go. Almost, but not quite.
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Back to that camera
I can’t remember why I wanted that camera so much, I think it stemmed from having never really been around creatives. The allure of this enigmatic trait of ‘creativity’. Making something of beauty that doesn’t always have a rhyme or reason for being, it just IS. I worked all summer for my dad to pay for that DSLR, kit lens and 50mm. When I finally got it all I wanted to do was make art, the problem was I didn’t know how, because I wasn’t creative. That didn’t mean that I didn’t want to be great.
My definition of creativity has warped and transformed over time, from a narrow view of the world where to me being a creative was as rare as being an Olympian, to a wider view where I see creativity all around me. As has my definition of greatness.
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We all want to be the hero
Off I went to university, more precisely Film School to get my bachelors in Film and Moving Image Production. I wanted to be great after all, and with sports no longer an option imagery seemed the obvious choice. I’d taken photos tirelessly over the past two years and my obsession with film and photography had grown exponentially. I fell in love with Film Studies during my A levels and my idea of greatness had changed from Olympian to Oscar winner. After all, the true greats are all in the film industry right? I mean how many people you see on the streets could name 10 great photographers? Ask those same people to name 10 great directors and you’re going to have a lot more success.
As I progressed through my degree course I realised that the film industry wasn’t for me. I loved films, I was passionate about making them but not about the process of how films were made. Film, so full of genius auteurs had lied to me. It wasn’t some journey that the crew went on together to unearth a beautiful story. It was planning, schedules and compromise. It was seeing a vision get pushed and pulled in a dozen different directions by a dozen different creatives. Maybe I just liked making single images?
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Aiming to be great
After university I felt like a real adult, I was heading out into the world to start a real career. Better aim to be great then? So I looked at magazines and websites, found hero’s in the industry to idolise. I wanted to win awards and see my name in magazines, I wanted other people to say I was great to confirm I had indeed succeeded. I set lofty goals and denounced the idea of being the ‘go to’ local wedding photographer. I wanted people to pay me to shoot in those epic locations, for the super-rich and for the worlds elite.
I worked bloody hard. I should probably point out that my wife, who started the business with me, also worked damn hard! Together we got our name out there and tried everything we could to stand out. We practised, experimented, imitated sometimes. In 2 years we had shot over 100 weddings and started to establish ourselves in the industry. We were on our way to greatness!
Moving Goalposts
Fast forward a few years and we were in a hotel room in Portland, our hearts still beating out of our chests having just delivered a talk to nearly 400 professional photographers. We had walked on stage to pretty epic music over a slideshow of our images, culminating with our names in huge letters projected on screen. In the years preceding this we had won many of those awards we coveted, we had seen our names listed in magazines among industry leaders proclaiming us as being two of the best in the world. We had achieved everything we’d set out to achieve.
But we still didn’t feel like greats. It was winter and as usual we wouldn’t be shooting weddings every weekend until the spring. We didn’t own our own house and we weren’t super rich – turns out running a business is a pretty expensive thing to do and the more you charge, the more you spend. So what the hell had happened?
It’s all about perspective
My whole life, I’ve looked at greatness as something that other people bestow upon you. It’s almost like the idea of being ‘cool’. No-one really knows what it is, you can’t make someone cool or pass it on. Yet there are people in the world who are decidedly cool. They wouldn’t say they were cool of course, but other people would tell them they were cool. Greatness is kind of the same, there’s people out there who have achieved incredible things whom nobody would claim to be great. There’s also people out there who have undoubtedly achieved less, who would still be widely recognised as ‘great’. What gives?!
When I really stopped and thought about all of this, it struck me that being cool, like being great, is almost like having a million-dollar cheque that’s dated 100 years from now. It’s a nice thought, but it doesn’t really do a lot to impact your life. It doesn’t change the way the people close to you feel about you. It doesn’t mean you’ll be rich and carefree (In fact I’d almost say the opposite. Plenty of ‘greats’ have just gotten by in life while their lesser talented peers have lived lives of abundance) so what REALLY is the point in being GREAT?
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Being Great or being Successful
After that talk our priorities started to change. We realised that the goals we had set didn’t really do anything for us on a meaningful level. Were the weddings we shot in exotic, foreign locations any more meaningful than the ones we shot on a shoestring budget in a cheap hotel? More to the point was the couples love for each other any LESS important? Of course not!
It also struck us that the goals we had set ourselves to achieve photographic greatness didn’t really help US. Being in magazines, winning awards, it made us a lot more popular among our peers, but potential clients don’t tend to read ‘Rangefinder Magazine’ or keep up with the latest ‘International Society of Portrait and Wedding Photographers’ competitions. We realised that there were photographers out there in droves who earned more money, lived a more relaxed lifestyle and were more fulfilled than we were. They weren’t photographers who’d won more awards or garnered more praise than us. They weren’t great.
Doomed to fail
I think what we realised is that ambition based on the idea of greatness is doomed to failure. It’s a life that hinges on the opinions of others. Opinions which are notoriously fickle. Great one minute can just as easily be ‘past it’ the next. If your whole life relies on the admiration and envy of others, it’s a pretty slippery slope to be perched on top of.
In many ways my experience in the photography industry was similar to my experience with sports. I was close, I achieved things that plenty of people never will (and – with photography at least – I’m not even finished yet!). But I don’t think I was ever destined to be ‘great’ at swimming or photography. Instead I’m happy to be ‘really good’ at both, I’ll be satisfied if that’s the closest I ever get.
Keep moving those goalposts
Greatness is overrated. Just look at all of the tortured artists, true greats who lived passionate but destructive lives. I don’t want that shit! I want to be a GREAT husband to my incredible wife. One day I’d like to be a GREAT father. For now, I’m happy being good, I’m fulfilled just being good at what I do. Taking pride in the memories I capture for people and knowing that I’ve done my job to the best of my abilities. I am happy to set aside visions of greatness for pragmatism, planning and a more relaxed lifestyle. Ultimately, even for the greats, after all of the acclaim and praise has died down, all you’re left with is yourself, and the people who love you.
If that’s not enough, nothing ever will be. Somehow I can’t think of anything sadder than that.
Mozart's music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.
- Albert Einstein
wow...very nice blog and amazing photos
Thanks!
Nice post. I am always looking for new people to follow here so that I would have interesting things to read in my news feed. Great content should be the goal on steemit and I am surprised how hard it is to find it.
Cheers to the love for the photography! May this year bring you a lot of amazing pictures!
Thanks, I think the content will improve a lot as the platform evolves, the good news is that there really is some great content out there and I'm so pleased you enjoyed mine!
Lets hope for better days ahead of us! :D
Very toughtful and heartfelt article! And it is so familiar to me
Thanks, that's great to hear!
Here here man!
It has everything to do with priorities... if you make anything a big enough priority, you'll eventually be great at it because you'll consume everything you need to. I honestly really struggle with parties and dinners out, etc, because they don't relate to my goals at all... but my partner loves to be social, so I have to compromise.
All I want to do is focus on my goals... I don't actually have to be great, I don't even really have to be good... but I do have to be better today than I was yesterday. As soon as that's mandatory, everything else should fall into place.
I love that last photo so much!
Absolutely! I feel you on the lack of interest in nights out, I don't drink which doesn't help but I just cannot find the interest anymore!
I think it's just over the past year or two I've really stopped worrying about what other people think. I think really nobody's THAT fussed about what anyone else is doing anyway!
Fabulous article @skiesandsports.
Most of us have been given a gift for something and once we have a feeling for what it is, it seems only natural to wish to excel in it. To be GREAT in it. Depending on our nature and background we can become as if addicted. As if it's the only thing in life that matters.
But as you have illustrated, at some stage we may see that if we continue to follow that path with blinkers on, we may miss out on much that life also has to offer us. Like daddyhood and having the time/space to being a great dad.
Thanks, really appreciate it @allyinspirit :)
Absolutely, I think for most people it's just figuring out what that is!