The habits of successful photographers, part I

Sormcloud, or an image for me and me alone. I like it, regardless of what anybody else thinks: the ability to create this to my liking, present it and not give a damn is quite high on the elements I’d consider photographically ‘successful’.

One of the most frequently asked questions I receive is ‘how do/did I/you make a career from photography?’ People are inevitably displeased when I tell them there is no formulaic answer or one size fits all – for the simple reason that each set of circumstances is different, and the industry keeps changing at an ever more rapid pace. The question itself probably needs to be broken down into two portions anyway: being a successful photographer is not the same as being a commercially successful photographer, though there can and usually is some significant overlap. If the definition of success – at least from an artistic point of view – is to make images that oneself is happy with, then it’s somewhat easier to define a roadmap here – and we will do so below. If it’s seeking popular affirmation, then I’m the wrong person to ask else I’d be shooting cats/ bikinis/ coffee etc. with a million filters. As for the commercial part – I’ve served enough repeat clients and communicated with enough pros at the top of their game to be able to identify things we all do in common; whilst it’s not a guaranteed recipe, it’s probably a good starting point. Hopefully some of you might find it useful. MT

The photography part

Practice. Practice implies not just repetition but continual conscious assessment; this is necessary in order for improvement. It’s easy to theoretically be able to do something, but quite something else to actually do it. However, with enough repetition and variation, your experience tends to cover the gaps and make up for any contingencies. Beyond this, it’s impossible to become familiar with techniques or equipment without practice; the executional portion of photography has to become muscle memory before you have enough visual ‘language’ to tackle the creative part consistently.

Work from the idea. You should have some vision in your mind of how the end result should look before taking the photo; even if it’s not necessarily defined enough to sketch out. Without this, you can’t effectively plan a staged shoot, nor do you know what you’re looking for in a candid one. The idea is the reference against which the work in progress has to be assessed, iterated, and improved. Similarly, everything else – technique and equipment choices – should be secondary to support the idea. Think in terms of themes or projects if this helps with the mental segregation of ideas. Ideally, you should also consider the end output, too: medium format is probably overkill for street photography that’s only going to go to instagram, but an iPhone is probably not ideal for large landscape prints.

Balance experimentation and curation. This is a subset of the practice dictat: curation helps you to assess what worked and what didn’t, and what to do to improve the next image. Controlled variation – i.e. experimentation – is required to define the range of possibilities which can then be assessed according to the intended idea. But too much experimentation and not enough curation just results in volumetric overload and images that don’t even get looked at, Winograd-style, and too few images results in nitpicking things that don’t matter and missing the big picture (emperor’s-new-clothes or forum-pixel-peeper-style). Put another way: if you haven’t tried all ice cream flavours, how do you know for sure which ones you like most?

Be critical. Though it is often said ‘we are our own worst critics’ – it isn’t true for everybody. It’s not easy to be objective about your own work; either we tend to be overly critical or not critical enough, resulting in either demotivation or self-congratulation and mediocrity. I’m a malcontent by nature and tend to fall into the former camp; everything can always be better. If it can’t, and we have already produced our best work, why do we keep shooting?

Only care what the end client thinks. Opinions are like noses: everybody has one, and not all are pretty. Ultimately, photographs are subjective, and such subjectivity is highly personal. The only opinion you really need to care about is that of the intended audience: for commercial photography, it’s simple: whoever is paying your bills (and ideally, you – though this is not always the case). For personal photography, it’s equally simple: you. Most people tend to confuse this however and land up seeking affirmation from social media family friends etc. who may not necessarily be knowledgeable, objective, or even unbiased. In short: do you like your image? If so, why, so you can use those traits to improve a future photograph; if not, why not, so you can avoid them?

Technique and hardware are only tools. I can’t stress this enough. I’m sure somebody will cite my purchases and accuse me of hypocrisy and gear-obsession, but the reality is I pick the right tool for the job, and that’s it. If the job is for clients demanding large files or large prints, I need as much image quality as I can get. If I want a sense of transparency, I need dynamic range and color accuracy (and resolution proportional to output). If it’s documentary, then responsiveness and stealth come first. If it’s personal pleasure, then the haptics matter. And in any case, I need to have confidence in the equipment and method. There’s a lot of experimental stuff I’ll try when not under pressure – which might yield one good image out of a hundred – but until these techniques are refined, I’ll never use them on a job because we we simply are not given that kind of latitude.

Be prepared. This encompasses several things: keeping your eyes open and always looking for subjects/ compositions even if your purpose isn’t to shoot; having a camera with you and ready to go to take advantage of opportunities that might arise; being familiar enough with your hardware that you don’t miss a shot because of setting fumbles and button/menu unfamiliarity. Even if you use them extensively, it’s very difficult to be familiar with more than three different control paradigms simultaneously – there seems to be a limit to muscle memory.

Don’t force it. Don’t shoot if you don’t feel like shooting. The pressure is usually counterproductive to creativity – especially if there’s no professional obligation to produce an image. It’s impossible to be continuously inventive in the same medium all the time. Fortunately it isn’t a problem for most hobbyists as life and day jobs get in the way; for pros we have admin and debt collection.

Part two continues with the (much longer) commercial part…

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