To be a specialist, you have to be a good generalist

Here’s today’s provocation of the day: there is really no such thing as a specialist. I’m going to explain why, using photography as the background context. The general expectation is a specialist in one particular topic or subject or tightly defined discipline should be familiar with and understand how to handle the vast majority of variations encountered around that topic or subject. They would probably have to keep up to date with new developments or changes and do enough experimentation to answer any self-doubt or uncertainty: an expert sports photographer, for instance, would know how to deal with indoor arena lighting, outdoor high noon and night games – and still produce an image that would pass muster for their clients. An aerial photographer would know how to deal with haze – either to minimise in post, or to use as a feature of the image. Yet I keep encountering this odd resistance…even amongst supposedly educated and image-savvy people. Why?

A couple of years back, I had a conversation with one of the senior editors of a renown photojournalist agency about an associate membership; I was told that my work was just too diverse and lacked the kind of tight stylistic focus they were looking for. As a further point, they also said all of their members without exception shot the same style all the time, regardless of subject. I could think of more than one example where this was clearly not true – simple example, Majoli used color and B&W, and others where it was a consequence of the underlying technology or limitations of their working environment – HC-B and perspectives/required shutter speeds/lack of very long lenses for RFs etc.; Majoli again and contrast levels in early work due to limited digital DR. Pursuit – or rather endurance – of these limitations may have lead to some rather unique pictorial results, which they found both personally appealing and professionally rewarding – resulting in turn in continuation of development of this style.

In short: external factors (as much as personal choices) lead to the current state. This is important because in every discipline of photography, we are responding to external factors of a sort – even when we create the set and lighting, those things still generally obey physical laws: the objects have to physically exist to be photographed. We may select the objects based on their aesthetic, physical and reflective properties, but again: we are reacting. (The opposite end of the creative spectrum would be say, automatic writing.) It would be very difficult to successfully incorporate something we have not seen into a photograph (compositing aside) or even know we wanted it to be part of the image without having seen it or something like it beforehand. Again: a response to external factors.

It is this response to external factors that leads to my next point – since the world around us is in constant flux, our subject opportunities keep changing, too. In order to present those subjects in the way we personally believe best suits their nature – i.e. our own style – we too have to change and continually evolve that very method of presentation. For example: you’d compose very differently in a location at high latitudes and long shadows at all times of the day vs. say the tropics, where shadows are short and light intense. Leaving a lot of space in the frame for the shadows may result in
an imbalanced image in the tropics, but not leaving space for the shadows might make a composition feel cut off at 10pm in midsummer in Sweden. Needless to say: both will result in very, very different feeling images. Using the sport shooter analogy: midday games vs artificial light. Same subject, different situations, not easy to get recognisably consistent images from a stylistic standpoint – especially when you’re probably not at all in control of light or weather. Bottom line: we have to adapt, which means ‘doing things the same way’ is out of the question.

To some degree, I do agree that it’s possible to have a consistent style across subject matter and even varieties of subjects – you could for instance photograph a plant, a person, a product and a building head on with a ring flash (albeit extremely large in the latter case). You would get a similar look in each image, providing the other underlying compositional elements were similar and you used a similar perspective. But to know that the ‘ring flash look’ was what you preferred over all other possible presentations – available light at dusk, indirect diffuse flash, high speed sync at noon etc. – you’d have to actually try them first.

Simply looking is not enough – it’s necessary to see whether the working method works for you, too. There’s no point in liking the output but finding that the setup etc. is impossible for whatever reason – you simply won’t get the shot anyway, and worse, be put off attempting because the results are discouraging. And since our own experience, vision and preferences continue to change as we evolve as observers and photographers – methods and style cannot stay static, either. If you only ever concentrate on the development of the horse drawn carriage as a method of transport, you may miss the automobile entirely.

Personally, I find that these evolutions in style tend to come in fits and starts. There are small improvements and refinements as one practices in an iterative fashion, but the big progress tends to come with underlying perturbations in environment, subject or process. Only then are you actively forced out of your comfort zone – either by necessity or inspiration – and produce different results. It’s why most people are uninspired to shoot in their own familiar home environments, but find themselves rather active travel photographers. The real key here is that in order to continually develop one’s own seeing, composing and presentation abilities – you have to continually seek these opportunities to inject change, and go about the experimentation in a scientific manner. It’s only through encountering different situations that you may learn cross-disciplinary techniques or have new ideas outside convention that in turn lead to a fresh presentation of the same subject – and ironically, these edge case exceptions are what tends to make for exceptional work. In short: doing the same thing as everybody else won’t get you a different outcome.

We haven’t even talked about client requirements differing yet – as a working pro (and more importantly, a going concern business) – it isn’t possible to always shoot in one’s own style. We take jobs that we might not necessarily feel inspired by, but have to work in a craftsmanlike way to pay the bills. We might be lucky enough to be engaged to shoot mostly in our own style, but then if we have created a certain look for a client – we are trapped by our own past, because a certain degree of sameness is necessary to maintain a consistent brand image. Again: step changes almost always come with a big change, e.g. new campaign, new client. And given the reality off the photographic economy these days, very, very few photographers have the luxury of being picky about jobs – the best we can do is continue to work on our own personal projects to hopefully demonstrate a unique enough and desirable enough vision that we get hired on the basis of the work we want to do, not necessarily the work we’ve done in the past.

The images I’ve chosen to illustrate this article are a demonstration of this – an evolution in my personal style of industrial documentary, with the most recent towards the end. There are elements incorporated from street photography, reportage, wildlife, product photography, cinematography, abstraction, even surrealist painting. Without trying all of these at some point or another, there’s simply no way I’d be able to produce the end result. Given a choice, I’d rather be the continually evolving photographer than the 100% constant, static one. I want to ask the ‘what if we did it x way?’ questions, rather than defaulting to autopilot. After all, if we make the same images time and again – not only do we eventually get unsatisfied with our output, but we cannot make a better image than before. Why photograph at all, if you’ve already made your best work? MT

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