Category: Inspirational

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What Makes a Professional (Photographer)?

I heard a remark made recently, by a colleague of mine.  I was with a group of photographers and we were discussing what makes a photographer, professional. stock-80 At a time when it seems like just about everybody is a photographer, and we are bombarded with thousands of images on a daily basis, what separates a “pro” from an amateur? My colleague stated, “A pro “makes” photographs – an amateur “takes” them”.  While that sounded like a reasonable distinction, it implied that photographers who shot “found moments” were not “professionals”.  What about photojournalists then, who are bound by ethics not to contrive an image?  So, I started thinking, “What set of criteria is used to determine what makes a photographer, a professional?”

Inspired by Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art, I will paraphrase, some of the qualities that Pressfield points out that define us as professionals:

  • “We show up every day” – no matter what.
  • We are committed for the long haul and the stakes are high. We need to feed our families and survive.
  • “We accept remuneration for our labor.” (I’ll add, we expect remuneration)  We love what we do but we work for the money.
  • We master our craft. This doesn’t stop. A professional is always trying to master their technique.
  • We act in the face of fear.  This is certainly applicable to a “war photographer”, but I would go further and say that it takes courage to follow a career path of photography.  Courage and commitment.
  • “A professional self-validates.”  We don’t need others to commission us, in order for us to work.  We are passionate about what we do and we will create regardless if we are commissioned or not.
  • “A professional reinvents himself. “  If you aren’t reinventing yourself, then you probably aren’t taking enough risks.  A professional knows not to play it safe – not in a creative profession.
  • A professional doesn’t take rejection or failure personally.  I have learned first hand, that whenever I have taken a leap and challenged myself, it has always come with rejection or some may say, failure.  Personally, I don’t equate rejection with failure.  Failure implies it’s the end of the story.  Rejection needs to take place, in order to get to the next chapter of the story.

I would highly recommend reading, The War of Art. It’s a must for anyone contemplating a creative career.  As far as my thoughts about using the criteria,  “making” or “taking” a photo to determine who is a professional photographer – let’s just say that a professional photographer is always “making” a photograph, regardless if it is contrived or not.  It is a conscious decision of a professional photographer, when and which “moments” to capture.  We show up every day, to do our job, whether it’s in a studio or a war zone. We are consistent, responsible and accountable.  We are in it for the long haul.  It’s our passion.  It’s our life. It’s our craft and our gift to the world, a legacy of images that define the time we live in.

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The Value of Photography

The who’s who of photography gathered last night, at Carnegie Hall to honor the “masters” of their trade at the Lucie Awards. The Lucies are like the Oscars of the “photographic industry”.

2013 Lucie Awards, Carnegie Hall ©Thomas Kelly
2013 Lucie Awards, Carnegie Hall
©Thomas Kelly

I had been asked to step in to present the “2013 Deeper Perspective Photographer of the Year Award”. on behalf of the ASMP when Executive Director, Gene Mopsik and President, Ed McDonald couldn’t attend.

I don’t usually get nervous about things like this, but I was last night. As I stood in the wings with photographer John H. White, who was waiting to go on stage to accept his Lucie, for Achievement in Photojournalism, I was mesmerized as I watched John.  He seemed to glow and I felt his grace, his humility and his gratitude.  It was a moment in my life that will stay with me forever.  It was calming. I watched and listened to his acceptance speech on the monitor backstage, and I was deeply touched.  So was the audience, as evidenced in their standing ovation.

John H. White is not a “rock star” type of photographer.  His images don’t “shock and awe”, not in the way a war photographer’s images do. John’s photographs capture the subtle moments of the human experience.  His legacy of images show us life as it really is.

This past spring, after 35 years with the Chicago Sun Times, John and the rest of the newspaper’s photographic staff were fired.  It was a huge blow to the photographic community, magnified by the fact that even John H. White, the “chairman” was “let go”, without even as much as a thank you. John wasn’t bitter about it though.  Michelle Agins wrote a wonderful article for the New York Times where she quoted John: “A job’s not a job because of labor law,” he said. “It’s just something you love. It’s something you do because it gives you a mission, a life, a purpose, and you do it for the service of others.”

All he had wanted to hear from the executives who let him go was two words that never came: thank you. But even then, he did not respond with anger.

John spoke more about the Sun Times’ firings in an interview with NPR where he said: “I will not curse the darkness. I will light candles. I will live by my three “F” words: faith, focus and flight. I’ll be faithful to life, my purpose in life, my assignment from life. Stay focused on what’s really important, what counts.” He repeated those three “F” words last night as he accepted his award.  The audience was humbled.  John had shed his light.

I have been thinking a lot lately, about the value of photography and the value that a professional brings to this craft.  John H. White and his archive of work is a stellar example.  His images, capturing the subtleties of life stand out amongst the noise.  They make us take notice of what is often over looked – the quieter moments of life.

As far as what a professional photographer brings to the world, I think John stated it best: “Every day, a baby is born. Every day, someone dies. Every single day. And we capture everything in between. You think of this thing called life and how it’s preserved. It’s preserved through vision, through photographs.”

As John walked off the stage and back into the wings, I felt enveloped by his glow that had seemed to magnify.  I caught his eye for a moment and said “thank you”. He nodded, and flashed his wonderful smile and in that moment, we connected and shared our understanding, of the “value” of photography.

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The Past Always Seems Better…….But Was It?

Chris Guillebeau struck a chord with his blog today ,“ The Past Wasn’t Better. Choose the Present Instead”, .  He relayed a story about a time his friends got together for a “gaming session”. They had ordered an emulator, which allowed them to play the games of their youth on the modern gaming console of the time.  They realized after a couple of hours of playing the “old games” that the games weren’t as fun as what they remembered.  They were very simplistic and hard – dying over and over again and not advancing to the next level wasn’t fun – it was frustrating.

Chris made the point that it’s easy to look back with fondness on the good ole days, but our memories get distorted as time passes and sometimes what we looked back on with fondness, never happened.

I had an interesting and somewhat similar experience this past weekend.  I had been invited to speak and coach at the 2013 Syracuse University Fall Workshops, which ASMP had contributed to as a sponsor.tumblr_muyzapUjbp1qe6iepo1_500  It was an intensely creative 3-day workshop where journalism students from the Newhouse School, came together with some of the best editors, designers, photographers and multimedia producers working in journalism. It was a hands-on workshop, where students worked with their coaches, to produce their projects (stories), under a tight 3-day deadline. What stood out to me this weekend, was that the “learning” wasn’t a one-way experience.  I learned as much as I shared – from the other coaches, as well as from the students. I’m sure I’m not the only coach, who picked up some tips from their students this weekend. I was also inspired and amazed at what is possible now, in terms of new ways to tell a story.

Sure, there are days when I’m simply overwhelmed by technology and the continued learning curve that comes with it.  And sometimes, I look back and fantasize how much better it was in the past.  At the workshop, one of my students had more than her share of technology mishaps.  At one point after losing hours of work, due to a software glitch along with not being able to access her audio files, somewhere in “the cloud”, she remarked with exasperation “ I wish things were like they used to be”.  She meant when things were tangible and analog. I quickly replied, “No you don’t because this 3 day workshop would have taken 3 months”. It was a moment when we both had the same realization that Chris Guillebeau had – our memories and perceptions of the old days are sometimes blurred and over glorified.

As much as we remember and long for the old days, the fact is we have it pretty good now.  There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t remind myself of that.  I choose to focus on what I am able to do in the present rather than look back at what was. If we choose to stay in the past and remember things being better then they are now, we’ll miss out on a whole lot of possibilities. As Chris beautifully sums it up: “Let go of the glory days.  Live in the present and build for the future.”

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Don’t Let Resistance Win

“Resistance is fueled by fear.  Resistance has no strength of its own.  Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from us.  We feed it with power by our fear of it.  Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.”

Steven Pressfield, “The War of Art”

Resistance manifests itself in many ways. Jaipur, India Most of us do everything we can, not to recognize the “resistance” in our own lives.  We plod along through life, just trying to maintain the status quo of our daily existence and habits, that we never “see” the sharp reefs buried beneath the surface of our relationships, our careers or how we are living our life.   We don’t see the reefs, because we don’t want to.  We think it’s easier to live a life of denial and that’s exactly what resistance wants.

Misery loves company.  Somehow, it makes us feel better about ourselves, when we compare ourselves to other under achievers, procrastinators, people down on their luck or just ordinary people who are extremely unhappy.  Essentially, people who don’t take control of their lives, but rather blame circumstances or others.  These people are victims of resistance.

There’s a saying “When a door closes – a window opens”.  I’ve always been one to focus on the “open window”, rather than the “closed door” but it’s not easy.  Any time I’ve had a shift in my life, or a “door closed”, my first instincts are to curl up in a ball, bury my head in the covers, admit failure and give up – or give in to resistance. But I know that if I succumb to those instincts, I won’t even notice the windows that have opened.  The funny thing is, most times, those windows were always open – I just never saw them.

I try to recognize those open windows in my life, but in order to do that, I need to battle resistance. That may mean, closing some doors myself.

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Past Predictions of the Future Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

One of the blogs that I regularly read is Copyblogger, which provides a lot of great information and insights into content marketing.  This past week, Brian Clark wrote a post entitled,  The Future of Content Marketing.   He writes:

“A bunch of really smart people got together in 1880 to predict the future, according to Jeff Stibel in his intriguing book Breakpoint. These experts were called on to predict how the rapidly growing Gotham would manage into the next century and beyond.

The prognosis was not positive.

NYC was a major source of American innovation in 1880. Skyscrapers, subways, stock exchanges — and it was doubling in size every 10 years. abb36e44-0c30-4a09-9279-0cd3c3fefa9b-A01867The experts were concerned by this growth, because they projected by 1980, you’d need six million horses to transport all the people who would live there.”

Folks were predicting the future of New York City, looking at it through the eyes of what was technologically possible then.  They were more concerned about all the horses and the “crap” that would be produced, than they were about greenhouse gases, because nobody knew what that was.

When I re-ran a blog post How Motion is Changing the Future of Photography, I used a similar analogy, that Ray Kurzweil had given when I heard him speak at NAB.  Ray said that, at the turn of the century (the beginning of the 1900’s), if you thought of yourself as being in the “horse and buggy business”, you were doomed to fail because of advent of the automobile.  But if you saw yourself in the “transportation business”, you thrived, no doubt because you broadened your view to include the automobile.  In my blog, I compared that analogy to what is happening in the still photography business, as the mediums of still imagery and video converge.  I received a lot of responses from that post, mostly from people who argued that still photographs would always be around. I don’t disagree with them.  I do think there will still be still images in the future – however, I think the still photography business will drastically change from how it is now.

Interestingly enough, every year I’m asked to bid on a still photography assignment for a tourism client.  Yesterday, I received the bid packet and there was a profound change.  They were not asking for a quote for still photography.  They were asking for a quote for video – and not just video – but video shot on a RED camera so that they could pull frame grabs from the footage and use those “still images” in their ads.  Now, that’s a game changer.

There’s always a danger in predicting the future and that’s because we tend to use and be influenced by the information and the knowledge that we have now – in the present.  What I’ve learned in my many years on this Earth is that the future will be nothing like how we imagine it will be.   I know that because what I imagined the future to be, some 35 years ago when I set out to make a career as a still photographer, was very limited in terms of how technology has changed things.

The human need to create will continue to mold a future that is way beyond what most of us could ever imagine.

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What’s Next for Still Photography? Things We Could Never Begin to Imagine.

One of the only good things about getting older is that I have gained a lot of perspective. Fortune teller through window, Atlantic City, NJ I never speculate what the future will hold by limiting it to what’s possible now because…..

When I began studying photography at Brooks Institute in the early 1970’s

I never would have imagined:

  • That I would own a personal computer that would change the way I communicated with people and ran my business.
  • There would be the Internet, email and mobile phones.
  • There would be auto-focus cameras and lenses.
  • Cameras would be fully automated – if you so choose to use them that way. When I began my career as a photographer, I needed to be a technician, and that meant understanding aperture and shutter speed and a lot of other things that went into making a still image.
  • I would be shooting still images without film.
  • I wouldn’t be limited to 36 frames on a roll of film.
  • I could change the ISO on my camera, as need be.
  • I could change the white balance on my camera, as need be. (No need for different types of film)
  • I wouldn’t need to “get it right” in the camera because I could “fix it later in post” with Photoshop or hundreds of other apps.
  • I could see what I shot – right after I shot it.  Without waiting for the film to come back from the lab or taking Polaroids.
  • There would be data cards and hard drives able to store thousands of images at affordable prices.
  • I could transmit my images digitally and globally with ease and speed.
  • I could share my portfolio electronically with virtually anyone, anywhere in the world.
  • That still cameras would be able to shoot video.
  • That video cameras would be able to shoot at high resolution with fast shutter speeds – good enough to take still images from the frame grabs.
  • My mobile phone would be able to shoot high res still images and video.
  • Magazines and newspapers would publish electronically,  running stories online with static and moving imagery  – and sound.
  • I would be able to watch a movie in my own home.  (without being wealthy enough to build a home theater with analog projector and sound system).  This was before the VCR and DVR were invented.
  • That feature movies and TV shows (other than soap operas) would be shot in video.
  • I would be able to make a feature length film without a Hollywood budget and big crew.
  • I could self-publish and distribute a book or a movie without a publisher or movie studio.
  • My TV would have access to the Internet (I couldn’t even imagine the Internet)
  • The Internet would give birth to  “new networks” producing original content.
  • I would be competing and doing business on a global scale  – as a small business owner.

A lot of the things I listed seem commonplace or even old technology nowadays.  But, I when I first began my career as a photographer, I never would have imagined any of them – not in my wildest dreams.

What do you imagine the future will bring?  There’s one thing for certain, if you limit your imagination to what’s possible now – you probably won’t even come close to what’s in store in the future.

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Change

  • “The secret of change, is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”  Socrates
  • “Change before you have to.”  Jack Welch
  • “Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.”            Margaret Mead   block-isle-jetty
  • “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”  Lao Tzu
  • “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”  Charles Darwin
  • “For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”  Steve Jobs
  • “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”  George Bernard Shaw
  • “Change brings opportunity.”  Nido Qubein
  • “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”  Winston Churchill
  • “If you want to make enemies, try to change something.”  Woodrow Wilson
  • “There is nothing permanent except change.”  Heraclitus
  • “It’s the most unhappy people who most fear change.”  Mignon McLaughlin
  • “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”  Frederick Douglass
  • “Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.”  Robert Kennedy
  • “One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.”  Frank Zappa
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5 Ways to Get Out of Your Own Way

I’m sure I’m not the only one, who sabotages their self from time to time.  It could be I stop myself from saying or doing something that could help me in my career or in my relationships.  Or it could be that I didn’t stop myself from saying or doing something and paid the price.Fin Paviment (end of pavement) sign on Osorno Volcano, Lake Llanquihue, Lake District, Chile  Regardless, all those things should lead to lessons learned.  I’ve had to repeatedly learn some lessons.  Most times, I just need to get out of my own way.

Five ways to get out of your own way:

  • Let go – I am not a quitter by nature so it’s hard for me to know when to let go. When I’ve given someone or something my “all”, and things don’t work out like I may have hoped, I remind myself that I cannot control others or circumstances. I can only control how I let myself react to them.
  • Move Through It – It never seems to work if I try to ignore an uncomfortable situation.  It just prolongs the stress of the situation.  In the long run, it’s always better to deal with things head on and move through them – not around them.
  • Talk Yourself Into Things (not out of them) – We think we are being prudent to talk ourselves out of those “crazy” and risky ideas that we have, so we do.  That’s not prudent, it’s succumbing to resistance and it’s the kiss of death for someone in a creative career.
  • Don’t Expect Perfection – If you wait for things to be perfect, they usually don’t get done.  Nothing really is perfect – there is always room for improvement.  And, there never is a perfect time.  Don’t let perfectionism stop you.
  • Stop Over Thinking It – when what life throws at me overwhelms me, I need to remember to stop, breathe and try to just be in that one moment.  Whenever I begin to over think a situation, I tend to make more out of it than it really is, which only stresses me out more.  I remind myself to focus on the now and it puts things into a manageable perspective.

Orson Welles once said “If you want a happy ending, it depends on where you stop the story”. Life is a journey – let it play out.

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One Million Miles

Yesterday, I took a look at my United Airlines frequent flyer statement, and realized that I had flown 822,571 miles with that airline!

United Airlines Boeing 777–200 landing in the ...
United Airlines Boeing 777–200 landing in the Blue Tulip livery. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was 177,429 miles away from a million lifetime flight miles. And that’s just the miles that I’ve flown with United!  It doesn’t include all the miles I’ve flown on other airlines, nor any of the miles I’ve flown using reward tickets. And it doesn’t include the miles I flew traveling around the world during the making of my film, Opening Our Eyes.

As I looked at that number, and thought about all those miles, Gail Mooney and daughter Erin Kelly, Giza, EgyptI couldn’t help but think about the destinations, the purpose and the motivation behind them. When I set out to live the life of a “traveler” at the young age of 19, I had absolutely no idea of how that would mold my life.  As a professional photographer, I’ve gone to the corners of the globe on dream assignments for magazines and corporations and loved every bit of it – my work has always been my pleasure.  When I wasn’t working, I’d still find a reason to travel, whether on a press junket or simply exploring the world with my husband and daughter.  Some of my favorite family memories are from our travels to Peru and Egypt.

I will always be a traveler.  I am a nomadic creature and I have a huge curiosity about our world and its people. For me, travel is more than going from point A to point B. Sure, there are plenty of times, on corporate jobs when I travel somewhere to photograph a particular person or a place and I’m never there long enough to get a sense of the place I am in.  But, for the most part, I travel to a destination to find out more about that place and tell the visual story of that particular place and its people.

As I thought about all those miles traveled, I started to think about reaching the “Million Miler” status with United.  I was only 177,429 miles away!  That may seem like a lot to many of you, and it might seem like no big deal to others, but to me it seems like a very attainable goal.  In fact, when I started to think about reaching that goal, I thought that I could easily attain that in 3 year’s time – just in time for a milestone birthday.  That’s something to consider and I shall.  I certainly have the motivation; I just need to define the destinations and more importantly the purpose.

Any suggestions?  I’m open to your thoughts.

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Rejection Therapy

©Mike Rode
©Mike Rohde

A few weeks ago, I attended the World Domination Summit in Portland, OR.  Any time I‘ve mentioned this conference to my friends, their eyes get wide and they all want to know more about it.  Essentially, WDS is a worldwide gathering of creative, unconventional people who want to live a remarkable life in a conventional world.

This was my second time attending WDS and I was inspired, enlightened, invigorated and awed by the speakers like Jonathan Fields, Nancy Duarte, Tess Vigeland, Chase Jarvis and many others.  There was one speaker Jia Jiang that really resonated with me.  He talked about his 100-day “rejection therapy” project. You can watch Jia’s talk online. He must have struck a chord with a lot of other people as well, because he brought the house down.

I’m certainly not a stranger to knowing what rejection feels like.  The last two years of my life I have been rejected more times than I have probably in my entire life.  It’s not that I’ve been seeking ways to get rejected.  It’s because I’ve pushed myself into new and foreign territories – I mean that both literally and figuratively.  For example, I challenged myself in my career by producing a big film project that literally took me around the world.  But when I think about the “journey” part and the production of that film, it pales compared to the hard work, time, blood, sweat and plenty of tears on getting the film seen. I got scads of rejection letters and emails from film festivals, distributors and agents but most outsiders see only my successes.

When I heard Jia talk about his rejections that led to his “rejection therapy”, I understood exactly how he felt.  In a way, I’ve lived my life like Jia’s rejection therapy. But, it wasn’t because I set out to heal myself from some missteps and misses that didn’t work out for me.  As I look back at some of the things that I’ve done in my life, I realize now that I was simply naively bold enough to do them.

I can’t really say that I have ever gotten used to rejection.  It continues to hit me hard at times.  But when that happens, I stop and I think about all the wonderful and crazy things that I’ve done in my life that never would have happened if I had let my past rejections stop me. I suppose I’m like one of those blow up punching bags that keeps popping back up.