How Do You Become a Photographer? Want It, Then Find a Way

How do you become a photographer? You get to work, of course. You shoot a lot and you develop a daily habit of shooting, shooting whether you need to or not. You work out your style and hone your chops and get started learning. Find your style, but find it by working, not by looking for it or thinking about it. Every photographer I've ever known keeps busy at it. If they have nothing to do they'll make something out of nothing. Doesn't matter what kind of photographer they are. They find their work and find a way to work at it.

Jingna Zhang has a nice post on her blog about how she started out, which Pierre found for us the other day. It tells about how she got to work when she was young, "learning framing and how to work with what light you have." It's mostly about starting simple and how to pay for entry-level equipment, but it's a beautiful post, really. The work does look like student work—good student work—but both the words and the pictures reveal a young photographer who really knew what she was going to be good at, a young photographer who had little doubt about what direction she wanted to go. That's lucky, I'd say, that sense of direction. I love that mental image of her working tight in her impromptu studio, AKA her parents' living room after moving the couch out of the way. (It's tough to work tight—there's a reason studios are large even when sets are not. Lights need room.) Hardly a wonder she shoots Vogue covers now. People who want it find a way, and then work toward their goals.

I experienced something similar, but with writing rather than taking pictures. (Like I joked the other day, if nerds just learn about things obsessively and geeks do things obsessively, then I'm a writing geek and a photo nerd.) I gave a lecture at a school long ago. I drew a Venn diagram of three overlapping circles to represent the then-current photography scene in Washington, D.C.—the biggest circle was photojournalists, a smaller one was commercial and advertising pros, and the smallest circle represented what were then called art photographers, many of whom, the ones I knew anyway, were associated somehow with the Corcoran Gallery and School of Art and the Kathleen Ewing Gallery up on Dupont Circle. A hand went up in the back of the room. "What kind of photographer are you?" was the question. I actually kind of surprised myself with the answer that popped into my head: "I'm a writer," I said. Writing geek, photo nerd.

The first three weeks of my recent recovery period from surgery, which took place a month ago tomorrow, was the longest stretch I've gone without writing in decades. I believe that's literally true. I love to write, and I do it most days. It was tough to be forced not to do it for the better part of a month.

As I've said before here (sorry if I'm repeating myself), I started writing seriously after I was invited to a small reception for the Canadian-American novelist Saul Bellow, the last American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature before Bob Dylan, at Dartmouth. I waited in a short line at the end of the breakfast to ask him a question, and what do you know, the guy in line ahead of me asked him the very question I meant to—"What's the best way to become a writer?" Mr. Bellow had obviously been asked the question before, because he answered without a pause: "Write three million words." He went on to say more than that; one of his points I remember was that you don't even have to worry about finding your voice (a common problem for beginners); you can't help but find your voice over the course of three million words. Just keep writing and it will come. It'll work itself free. Well, anyway, I went back to my dorm room and got out my calculator. Three pages a day, I figured, 275 words per page, call it 300,000 words per year, and 3,000,0000 words would take ten years!! I remember being utterly dismayed. I was 18, so of course I wanted to be famous right then, or the next month or the next year, not a long trudge of ten years out toward the horizon.

But I'll say this for myself, I got right to work.

Before long I had established a daily habit of writing that is now more like an appetite. In fact (again, literally, and I do know what literally means), it's easier for me to go a day without eating than to go a day without writing.

Tomorrow's the Fourth of July, and my lakeside neighborhood is full to the scuppers of vacationers—people with Summer cottages and their families and their visitors, and rental houses chock full of gangs of folks, parked pickup trucks and SUVs from New Jersey and Ontario and Virginia clustered all around the houses like wildebeest at a watering hole. And one thing I notice is that older men at their vacation homes seem to love to get out and work. They're out puttering around, running things with motors (the noisier the better), cleaning stuff, fixing stuff up, tearing stuff down, going to get stuff, throwing stuff out, tending to the yardwork, hammering, carting stuff around from here to there and back. They're on vacation doing what they want to do—which does include "recreational activities," of course, but then, in the in-between times, work of some sort. You can tell they're just in the habit of working and working is what they like to do. Relax? Sure, but just as soon as I get this done.

I write even when I don't have to. If I have no reason to, I do it anyway. Keepin' my hand in, I guess. Whatevs.

Well, I'm no Saul Bellow, and my prose is the opposite of deathless—it has a sell-by date as short as that of a bag of carrots. But then, I get to write, and you're reading this so you know I get to have readers, which is an honor and a pleasure (thanks). No complaints. No complaints except when I'm forced to not work for three weeks!

I think that's how you know if you're a photographer. You work, even when you don't have to. Because it's what you do.

Mike
(Thanks to Pierre, Jingna, and to Saul Bellow 1915–2005
Illustration: my friend Llew with the old musket he found in their house.)

P.S. An interesting coincidence: Jingna Zhang says in her article: "Growing up, my family wasn't very well off. My parents argued about money, and often. I remembered once when I was 4 or 5, I was so scared and angry in the next room when they were fighting, I swore to myself that day, that I'd become financially independent as soon as possible and then forever, so I'd never be a burden or need to rely on anyone again. Ever."

Then, as I was looking for a bio of Saul Bellow to link to for people who have never heard of him, I ran across his "Memoirs of a Bootlegger's Son," a partial autobiography he started and then forgot about that was exhumed and published by Granta. The first page, before the paywall, vividly recounts his parents fighting about money. "Those are lucky who die when their childhood is over and never live to know the misery of fighting in the world," his father yells furiously at his mother. 

Pa would sometimes frown at me and say that I reminded him of [Ma's brother] Mordecai. He saw the faults of my mother’s family embodied in me. In my own mind I came to accept this, and was not ashamed of it even when Pa would say, ‘There’s insanity in your mother’s line. Her Uncle Poppe was a firebug, and he was very dangerous. He used to set the curtains afire. These things are inherited. There’s no taint like that on my family.’

‘Not if you don’t count hard hearts and bad tempers,’ Ma would occasionally, but too rarely, answer. Only occasionally, because she loved him. When he was away she’d say to the children, ‘If you told Mordecai that you needed something, he put his hand in his pocket and gave you what was in it, without looking.’

Good stories.

TOP will be off tomorrow for the U.S. holiday (Independence Day, AKA The Fourth of July)

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Mark Hobson: "Making pictures, lots of pictures, is the only way to find one's vision, i.e., personal way of seeing. My suggestion for doing so is simple enough...use a phone camera, if only as a handy picture-a-day device. My iCloud photos account has 12,000+ pictures, most of which were made over two years. For comparison, my 'real' camera picture archive has 7,000+ pictures—pictures processed to a 'final' standard—made over the past 20 years. Obviously, I make a lot of pictures, but more so since I began my use of the iPhone camera.

"So, here's my point....if one wishes to make a lot of pictures in his/her vision quest, taking a 'real' camera out and about and subsequently going about one's processing routine is a time-consuming endeavor, especially if one is making a lot of pictures (which is the point). On the other hand, taking a phone camera—which is probably always on hand—out of one's pocket, touching the button (shutter) and doing a bit of processing on the phone using a processing app is a five-minute task. After making 20 or so pictures, send the files—directly from the phone—to an online printing source for the making of small proof prints.

In my opinion, viewing prints is mandatory in order to judge what one is doing. Before one knows it, there will be a box full of prints from which, with careful/thoughtful viewing, a picture-making pattern will emerge and form the foundation for developing one's vision. CAVEAT: before anyone starts saying that camera phones suck—they don't suck, they are capable of creating very fine results—remember that the point of this exercise is to make a lot of pictures. Not 'perfect' pictures. Just pictures. Pictures that don't require a lot of thinking but rather a lot of just plain looking and seeing."

[Ed. note: I wrote about Mark here. (One of my all-time favorite post titles, by the way.)]

Jeff: "TOW...The Online Writer. Doesn’t have the same ring."

Mike replies: Well, in the initial conception, you are the online photographer...that is, each reader is. Me as well, but certainly not just me.

Actually, the initial conception of the blog was that it would be an outlet for my friends to write blog posts occasionally. Several friends had told me that they would start blogs but for the fact that they couldn't keep up with the day-to-day demands for content. Since I've always been wordy (ahem), my idea was that I'd take care of the day-to-day, make sure there was something up every day for readers to find, and then they could each contribute whenever they wanted to. That has been reflected in the blog with a fair amount of success, but maybe not to the degree I first envisioned.

Comments

[Nick Van Zanten]

Amen! And Mike, thank god you are back.

[Huw Morgan]

What a great segue to a question about where you are with your book project. My Visa card is locked and loaded.

[Jeff]

TOW... The Online Writer. Doesn’t have the same ring.

[Well, in the initial conception, YOU are the online photographer...that is, each reader is. Me too, but certainly not just me. --Mike]

[Tim Bradshaw]

Where do I get that 'Camera Work' tshirt?

[Roger Bradbury]

@ MIke: "YOU are the online photographer" Yep!

A good few years ago, I saw a band called Shamus O'Blivion and the Megadeath Morrismen. They played loud folk rock, and handed out broom handles wrapped with coloured tape, for all us bikers to bang on the floor in time to the music.

At the end of the night, they left us, with "We were Shamus O'Blivion, you have been... the Megadeath Morrismen" (Big cheer from the audience)

To my great surprise and delight, the band is still going:
https://shamusoblivion.co.uk/music.html

[c.d.embrey]

Mike said: I was 18, so of course I wanted to be famous right then, or the next month or the next year, not a long trudge of ten years out toward the horizon.

Emmylou Harris sang:
Nobody's gonna make me do things their way
By the time you figure it out it's yesterday
Well it comes to he who waits I'm told
But I don't need it when I'm old and gray
Yea I want it today Emphasis added.

My sentiments, exactly.

There are lots of ways to write. Some authors put pencil to legal pad, other dictate to a secretary using a typewriter. I'm set up to dictate to my iPhone, synced to my iMac through the cloud. In three week, I could have have written 255 Shades of Grey ;-)

[Ernest Zarate]

A creator creates because he or she has no choice. They are compelled. They simply must. It is as simple, and complex, as that. To do otherwise is akin to denying oxygen to that creator. Without that existential need being met, that individual will cease to exist.

If one lacks that compelling force, I’d argue they are not a creator. No harm, vice, or shortcoming there. Just a simple statement of fact.

[Jeff1000]

Hey Mike, I've finally made it as a pro photographer! Really, I'm a flatbed semi truck driver who hauls lumber to construction sites, locally, in Las Vegas. Actually, I have to photograph the lumber units as a forklift driver removes them from the trailer. It's proof that 84 Lumber fulfilled their order obligation. Sometimes framing companies claim they didn't receive their stuff; well, the photographs I take offer proof. CYA.

My camera of choice is a Google Pixel 3XL. I gotta tell ya though that Google did a brilliant job with their camera app software. My lumber photos really stand out in juxtaposition to the other drivers, er, I mean the other pro photographers 😁. I'm like the Ansel Adams of lumber landscapes hahaha. I finally made it! 😀👍

[Congratulations Jeff! :-) --Mike]

[kirk Tuck]

I'll try working harder. I want to continue to be a professional photographer!

[No, sir, YOU should give it a rest! <*wink*>
--Mike]

[-et-]

The first three weeks of my recent recovery period from surgery, which took place a month ago tomorrow, was the longest stretch I've gone without writing in decades. I believe that's literally true. I love to write, and I do it most days. It was tough to be forced not to do it for the better part of a month.

Not surprising. In one* of his autobiographies, Isaac Asimov said that he HAD to write at least 2000 words a day. He normally traveled by train, and he carried a full-sized IBM typewriter with him whenever he traveled so he could get his daily fix even when on the move. (He also had multiple IBM typewriters, so he would always have a backup available even if one failed while another was in the shop for an overhaul.)

As I recall, at his death 30 years ago he had something on the order of 650 published books. And they ranged from multiple types of fiction through multiple non-fiction subjects ranging from science through an annotated guide to Shakespeare and an annotated guide to the Bible.

* He wrote an autobiography, and then years later wrote a second one from scratch rather than just updating the first one.

- Tom -

[C.R. Marshall]

Three million words... I wonder what that works out to in photographs. Anyone have any thoughts? (and don't give me the "Picture is worth a thousand words" calculations. That is information content not learning content.)

[David Bennett]

For your viewing pleasure - Suzi Eszterhas: "The Life of a Wildlife Photographer" | Talks at Google

https://youtu.be/yU2qzT1BfiY