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Know Your Place, Part Two
April 8th, 2009
I alluded yesterday to the tendency of photographers, particularly working photographers who endeavor to do this for a living and therefore feel the stakes are higher, to compete with each other. Few things kill the creative spirit so efficiently.
We become photographers, most of us, because in this craft we discover a means of expression that suits us. And we love it so much we do it as much as we can, and then people begin to pay us to do it, which suits us just fine because we love doing it so much. But soon it becomes the bread and butter and because, we assume, there is only so much work out there, we become competitive. We look to other photographers and see how they’re making money, which markets they’re serving and what those markets want. Without knowing it we’re begun to drift towards the herd and away from our unique vision.
Yesterday I championed the value of knowing our place and fighting our weight. I think it’s just as important to know your place and find your niche. Find that place that you fit like a glove and do so well others will flock to you. Does Steve McCurry do weddings? Maybe, but he’s not known for it, is he? Does Annie Leibovitz shoot Nascar races? Does Moose Peterson shoot kiddie portraits? Joe McNally says “shoot what you love.” Same thing. What’s the one thing you love to shoot so much you could do it every day? You love shooting it so much you shoot it with a special affection and an eye knows the subtleties of the subject for having looked at it day-in and day-out? Find that niche and own it, baby. I’m not talking about being better than others, but about being unique, different from others.
“Yeah, but what if someone else already shoots that niche? I mean, I wanna shoot elk and stuff, and Moose Peterson already shoots that stuff. AND his name is MOOSE for crying out loud!! How can I compete with that!?” I hear ya. But you’re slipping into the comparison paradigm, again. It’s not a pyramid with room for only one at the top of each broad category. Make your own pyramid, in your own style, from your own angle. But make it yours. Unmistakably. Switching metaphors, make sure the red X you are standing on is yours and yours alone. There’s no room on Zack Arias’s X for me – it’s his and his alone. And if I try to usurp his then my own X, the place I alone was created to occupy and shine on, rests vacant.
In marketing speak this is what branding and positioning are all about. When the market thinks of you, what red X do they associate you with. Heck, if you’re smart and really creative your X won’t be red. Probably won’t even be an X. Do they think of you as a destination wedding photographer or as the guy who does weddings and portraits and Nascar and travel and dogs and still life and, oh, also landscapes and macro flower stuff. If it’s the latter then you stand on a very diluted X, my friend, and when the client goes looking for a destination photographer they’re going to look for the brightest red X in the style they prefer and go with him. Same with the client looking for portraits, Nascar, travel, dogs, and still life.
Know your place. Own it. Make it the brightest, most unique red X you can make it. And best of all, beyond all the marketing talk, is that this is the place you’ll be most challenged, most content, and most creative. Feeling frustrated? Where’s your X?
Excellent sermons, Minister DuChemin!
Great stuff in this series. Now I just need to find a place to build my green Y.
Zack Arias has really been hitting people with the same message in his critiques. It’s tough for those starting out to know what our niche is. I feel kind of like a med student who needs to try on several different specialties. It seems like it might be ok for a doctor to be a “general” practitioner, but a “general” or shoot everything photographer must not shoot anything well. It can be hard to decide what you like to shoot the most when it seems that there are few types of photography that appear to make money. Then you keep asking yourself if this path is just about money, or about what you want to do. What I love to do is use my camera. The hard part is figuring out the what/how/when/where bit.
So here is a question for people: Is it better to have a job (any type of shooting) with a camera in hand, or another job (not photography) that pays for you to get your camera in your hand?
Chris, for me it’s definitely the latter. I’m not interested in being a photographer just to be a photographer. There are lots of things that I wouldn’t enjoy shooting, and I would rather do something else than do those shoots.
I think that the best way to figure out what it is that you like to photograph is to have limited time for shooting. When you have limited time you’ll have to make choices. Then you’ll find that you’re willing to give up shooting X in order to shoot Y. Do that enough, and you’ll realize that there is no point in shooting X. You’re a Y shooter. Or, perhaps ask yourself for what you’d get up at 4am to shoot. My 4am shoot list would be rather concise.
Hey guys, a quick reply before I head out the door for meetings. I think it’s both. Depends where you’re at. It took me 15 years+ to unearth the things I loved shooting. Before that, i shot anything that moved. Or didn’t move. Pretty much shot everything. And I don’t regret it, I think it was valuable. You shoot something, decide if you enjoy it, are passionate about it, and then – if the answer is no – you move on, one step closer to knowing what you ARE passionate about. But like I said, took me 15 years.
But long term it’s better to have a job shooting what you love than a job not shooting what you love. And I’d take no job in photography at all over taking one just to pay the bills. That’s why I didn’t go into photography straight out of college. For that matter it’s why I didn’t go into “the ministry” straight out of theology school. Unless it’s right, doing something merely for a paycheck isn’t much of a life, just a living. Assuming I’m eating and paying my bills, money isn’t as important to me as my vision and my craft.
Jeffrey, I love your 4am concept. “What’s your 4am shot?” – brilliant!
that was great, thanks for that David!
Another great post David, both today and yesterday, and something I think I knew, but needed to hear before I admitted it. You get such a buzz from shooting all the different things you love but it’s easy to get carried away by that “Hey guys! Look at this! ..and this!! …and this!!! …and even this!!!!” but in the long run it doesn’t do your career any good. Time to continue with that site revamp coming up I guess.
As a slight aside, I never really thought of you alongside Al Jourgensen but now you mention it….
Chris – I’m looking at this as well. I love to photograph everything. I idea of giving up shooting weddings before I’ve even tried one just isn’t for me.
Luckily I’ve got a job I love that doesn’t involve photography (at least not 100%) that pays the bills. It allows me to take a shotgun approach to my photography business at the moment while I see what I truly can’t live without shooting. Sure it hamstrings me as far as having a dilute red X (a faded, pink, lowercase x at the moment) but it is fun and exciting and I don’t have the morgage riding on it.
I also think that it can be hard making your way with one speciality if you’re not well know for it. It seems to be a double edged sword – shoot one thing and do it well but what if no one wants to buy your one thing? It seems like the market might drive our endevors somewhat – is that the practical side of being an artist in any medium.
Don’t forget – Ansel Adams shot catalogue images to support his landscape work.
Hey, we do NOT speak that way about Ansel Adams on this blog!
Hard making your way with one specialty? You betcha. The reward when the payoff comes and you’ve not completely sold out to the man? Priceless. Sure there’s going to be compromise. And some people shoot weddings to subsidize their true passion. But don’t change how you shoot what you love, or change what you shoot to begin with, just to earn a buck. Find a better way. Be a zoologist ( I know, crazy example, right Alex?) if that’s what it takes to allow you to create the images you want. Do it entirely for the market and the money and it’ll suck you dry and you’ll be just another creator of kitsch, propaganda, or just crap.
I hear you David. Not sure about Alex, but I have spent a lot of years looking for the thing that I would love to do that would earn income. Resturants, retail sales, bike mechanic, tax prep, cabinet maker, (to name a few) and now software developer. I am good at what I do, and don’t hate it, but I wish for something a little more creative. I have rediscovered photography after a long hiatius (pentax film camera in my early 20′s), and would like this to be my new career. (I had considered photography back then, but abandoned it for reasons unknown now) I have a lot of work to do on the craft side, so I am not “quitting my day job” just yet, (although my current software contract expires soon) so I am planning a slowish transition. The trick is to find the little red X to transition to that enables me to shoot the things I love.
Oh yeah, I wasn’t advocating selling-out to the man. Wait. White, Anglo-Saxon, late thirties – I am the man aren’t I !?!?!
Just kidding.
No, I understand that we need to be careful about losing ourselves in pursuit of the almighty dollar. I think sometimes we idealize “Photography” and in striving to keep it “pure” we neglect the idea that we can be journeymen /women and artists. Is it a hard balance – Sure. Will it take time away from pursuing your vision – Perhaps. My comment about Ansel wasn’t derogatory in the least, simply practical.
Alain Briot talks about his early work in photography as a time when he took very commercial images of iconic places to sell to tourists. He even has some, ‘shutter’, montages that he made into posters. It was a means to an end. He now seems to be much more focused on the artistic side of his photography and developing his vision. He never forgot what he wanted to achieve nor did he stop making images he loved personally. Those years shooting commerically viable landscapes directed his vision and helped it develop.
I agree, don’t be forced from your passion by the market. But I imagine most people here aren’t market driven to begin with – most artists aren’t.
Great post David and great conversation everyone! It brings to mind a comment I heard Eric Clapton make in an interview when discussing Stevie Ray Vaughn’s guitar style. He said “there came a time where Stevie stopped sounding like Albert King and started sounding like Stevie”. As we grow in our photography we see styles that attract us. We try to emulate that style so as to understand the technique and creative process that formed the image. I don’t see anything wrong with that, but the big step is to take everything you have learned and turn it into your own style rather than getting stuck in someone else’s style. I think I still have a good 10 years or so in front of me to figure that out!
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David,
Excellent pos,t and great words for all of us to take into consideration.!!