How do you know if you’re any good, as a photographer?
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 7:23AM It amazes me how some people who call themselves photographers consider their work to be amazing, when their photographs, in fact, aren’t so hot. And at the other extreme, some purely humble folks make astounding photographs without a sense of how good they are. There is little correlation between talent and ego; they are independent qualities.
Yet, an astounding ego can propel meager work to greater heights, while too humble a self impression can prevent work from achieving its potential. Quandary.
Do you have a sense of where you fall in this spectrum? Probably not. Giant egos self-inflate, modest folks don’t have a pump. And like vampires, neither archetype can see him or her self in a mirror.
You probably fall somewhere in between the walking ego and the modest shadow. After all, there can only be so many giant egos on the planet, otherwise it would implode. So if the extremes of self impression are not driving your opinion of your work, how do you know if you’re any good?
If you’re getting work that you enjoy, have a job making pictures that you don’t hate, at least place in some reputable contests, your latest project landed a gallery show or publisher, then that’s one set of measures, and by golly, pat yourself on the back.
But what if the work you’re getting isn’t what you’d really like to be doing and most of the assignments at your job are demeaning and you never even place in contests you enter, your projects don’t get shows or published? And what if you don’t seem to be able to change any of the negative stuff?
Maybe you aren’t that good at making pictures. Maybe you should be doing something else for a living.
But, wait. If Bill Clinton can define what sex is, maybe you can define what good is, to you. I’m not saying that you should lower the bar to make yourself feel better about your work, though that’s a well worn path. Pointing out the ineptitude of those who reject you is another path: “Those judges sucked; my boss has no clue; that publisher doesn’t know diddle.” If you hear yourself blaming things outside of yourself for your lack of success/unhappiness, chances are it’s your lacking - you may well suck.
Even within the most horrid of situations, it’s possible to produce rewarding (good) work, if you’re disciplined about it.
So what is good? To you?
Having a fabulous job and winning contests and all that stuff is great. No question. A different set of measures of good is whether the work you do makes a difference, whether you can say one day to the next that you learned something new, whether the photographs that you make give you a better sense of who you are and of who the people around you are, whether you stop time and leave a trail of visual bread crumbs of your life. In other words, don’t expect people outside of you to validate your work as the only measure of its value.
If you can make a living from making pictures, that’s a gift from high - even if the circumstance or pictures suck. If you can’t find reward in that setting, then create a setting where you can.
But don’t fool yourself either.
Conflict will come if you try to compare your work to the greats, the best out there, when it really doesn’t play in that ballpark.
Reader Comments (8)
"If you can make a living from making pictures, that’s a gift from high - even if the circumstance or pictures suck."
Amen to that.
This is everything I've been considering these past few months
As always Mike, love reading your posts. -Mark
Hi Mike, I would love your thoughts on my portfolio. It's a mix of everything I've done. I put in very little of my fine art work because I was concerned it wasn't commercial enough. Best, Jeanne Conte
Fantastic post.
The dichotomy I'm currently dealing is I'm not happy with the work I produce that I get paid for, the company doesn't want snapshots yet they also don't want anything too creative. Their definition of creativity changes with the weather.
My own personal work I'm very pleased with. I had a revelation almost 6 years ago which caused me to completely change how I approached my shooting and has made me much happier. I think it's more interesting and creative, it got me playing around with new techniques and shooting some video also. I'd love to shoot like this all the time, take risks and chances on stuff and the people I work for aren't interested. At all.
I used to look for other journalism jobs, but I've given that up. I'm actually looking at getting completely away from journalism. Finding a job doing anything else and do freelance and my own stuff on the side. Which is kind of sad, almost 15 years of being a photojournalist and it comes down to this. I fought my bosses for awhile trying to do interesting stuff, finally realizing it's just not worth it. They don't care, they'd rather fire me. I'm kinda ok with that if it happens, I like my abilities and they won't be able to take them away.
Well said.
Not getting any work drags me down into a melancholy state & it's nice to get things in perspective again
:-)
Fantastic post, Michael. It's been printed and now has a permanent spot on my inspiration wall.