An ‘eye’ for photography?

Man, I remember it like it was yesterday. Getting my first ‘real’ camera and attaching that lens to it. I had everything shipped to my friend Brian’s office since I knew I wouldn’t be around to receive it during the day. After walking into his office and excitedly seeing a bunch of boxes with NIKON written on them I opened them up and started charging the batteries and attaching the lenses. After a long time researching cameras, lenses, and anything else related to photography that I could get my hands on…I was finally holding in my hands my new joy…the Nikon D80 camera with a 18-70mm lens attached to it. Also I had the 70-300mm and 50mm f/1.8 lenses which I’d be trying out next.

Brian was sitting across from me as I opened up the boxes, put the charged battery in, followed by the memory card, turned on the camera…then raised the viewfinder to my eye and snapped a shot of Brian. Then with great pride I lowered the camera to look at the image as it appeared on the rear LCD. Thoughts began to run through my mind:
“How much would I charge when someone comes to me to do their modeling portfolio?”
“Should I begin doing wedding albums right away for my new client base or wait a while?”
“At what point do I consider leaving my job to do this full time? Tomorrow, next week, or next month perhaps?”
“Maybe I’ll call now I think and just resign over the phone…this way I can capture a self-portrait shot that will appear over me speaking during my interview with the Nat Geo TV people.”

Now before the next thought ran through my head, the image I had just taken had come into view on the LCD on the back of the camera. If you were there, I swear you’d be able to hear the sounds of crickets chirping as I tried to figure out what happened. It makes no sense! I checked the dial. Yup, the camera is set to AUTO MODE, so what’s the problem? How come this image doesn’t look like it should be worth millions and why hasn’t my phone started ringing with Time Magazine or even Maxim asking me to do a shoot or at least a small biography of how I climbed to the top?! I even got the lens which was better than that cheap plastic crap lens that I see everyone else walking around with which usually comes with the camera!! Hmm, maybe I should return this lens and go for that pro level one that costs $1200? Never mind, so I took a couple more shots that were unimpressive and figured I’d try another lens. So out came the big gun…the 70-300mm, which I slapped on and immediately headed outside with to zoom in and capture the beauty and joy of the first thing that I could lay my eyes on. As I walked outside with the big lens, it almost felt like Mel Gibson and the whole army from Braveheart were behind me and ready for the charge. And even further off in the distance I swear I could hear a Gaelic war song being sung. Come to think of it, I’ll bet that if Mel had a D80 with the 70-300mm on it, he just might have won in the end. Anyway, the thought briefly ran across my mind “What if someone sees me and asks me to do their corporate head shots for them and I don’t even have a business card, website, hair and makeup people, and a studio?” That’s ok, it’s a chance I have to take being a pro photographer now. I’ll get those things next week.

So outside there was a lovely brown sign on a brown brick wall with a company name on there that I decided to turn into my masterpiece. Ready! Aim!! FIRE!!! Now after pushing that shutter button I had to wonder for a moment if that brick wall would still be standing, figuring that the mere intimidation of a monster lens such as that one simply being pointed in the general direction of that wall could cause utter devastation. The Braveheart crew charged passed me towards the brick wall…all of them yelling “What’s in your wallet!!!” However, much to my relief the wall was still there. Now I again looked down at the LCD screen on the camera and there it displayed my image. Silence everyone please…as I try to figure out why that image just looks like a plain boring sign on a boring wall. What’s happening here? Why aren’t the images stellar? Isn’t that green A supposed to stand for ‘Awesome-photos-Mike’? What am I going to show Annie Leibovitz at the imaginary lunch I had already planned for us? And more important…who the hell is Annie Leibovitz anyway?

It was like one of those moments where it’s dark and raining outside and the main character in the movie makes some horrible discovery, looks up at the sky and yells “WWHHHHYYYY!!!!???” Now I can’t say that my photography sucked. It wasn’t photography, ergo it can’t really suck. What I was taking were simply snapshots. Sure the image quality looked better than the little pocket point and shoot cameras, but the shot itself was nothing special. In fact none of my images from that first day were anything special…not even accidentally.

Now today…people will come up to me and say “You have a good eye.” or something like “You have a good natural ability for this.” so on and so on. But the truth of the matter is that not only did I start off with virtually NO talent or ability…but even my images today which I feel are miles and miles from where I first started, still have a superbly long way to go. And for me to make this basic move to a point where people enjoy and look forward to seeing some of my work has taken literally thousands of hours! Practice shots, online images, figuring out lighting setups, reading camera magazines, dissecting setups from catalog magazines, working with other photographers, going through feedback and constant critique have inched me up on the scale day by day. I realized very quickly that simply picking up a camera and going out for the day with it will not make me a better photographer. But looking at my previous work myself and with the help of others and saying “How can I improve on this?” is what the key has been.

So I personally do not believe in that “eye” for photography being a natural thing. Some people are more creative than others, some might get certain things faster than others. But I believe we all start with the basics and move on from their to develop our own style. It’s so easy for me to look at someone who’s already made it on any pro level…Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Madonna, Gary Kasparov, Annie Leibovitz and simply think “Man what a natural talent they must have.”, and completely overlook the fact that each one of those people and countless others has spent so many years devoted to practicing and improving their skills at what they do that there aren’t enough hours in a year to account for it.

What I see and what many of us see is the final product. When we think of Michael Jordan, we think of him floating from the free throw line and landing a superb dunk. We don’t think about back in the day when he was rejected from his high school basketball team and then dug a hole in his back yard and would practice every day jumping out of it to improve his ability, or the thousands upon thousands of hours he would dribble, shoot, weight train, sprint, jump, etc…all to improve himself. What we see is the fast forwarded results because most of us are not there when someone is ‘in the making’. People ask me “How can I create that shot which you did?” To which my only real response is ‘practice’.

Yes, even in photography it’s all about the work that you put into it and the desire behind that work. I believe that if you truly want to be a great photographer, then you can be. The greatness does not need to be that you’re ever published in a magazine or even sell an image. It can be something as simple as bringing a smile to someones face or a tear to their eye. The only ‘eye’ for photography that I have is the one that I work almost every day to improve on and push to the next level. When someone hires me for a job, even if they love the results…I look at every image and say “Great, they liked them…now how can I improve them even more next time?” On top of that I surround myself with people who provide positive support. As a photographer I don’t need people around me who say words such as “can’t” or “won’t”. Instead I look up to the people who say “This was ok/good and here’s where I think you can improve and why.” There’s a lot more to say on a topic such as this. Part of my inspiration in writing this came from Craig Tanner, Bryan Allen, Jessi Ringer, many other friends and family, and of course all of the people who come up to me and say “Hey that’s a nice shot, you have a good eye…how do I make that exact shot?”

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~ by novophotography on November 9, 2009.