Tom Burke said yesterday: "Here's another thought to add: is it possible that when you stop feeling that you're learning new skills and gaining new knowledge but are instead just garnering experience, the passion for (whatever it is) just drops? Not just photography, but lots of endeavours? The 'Do I really want to do this for the rest of my life?' moment?"
A few thoughts about that. First, golf, exhibits 1, 2, and 3 (I'm going somewhere with this, so bear with me):
1. An old commercial: the professional golfer Tom Kite, then at the top of the game, and another golfer are seen getting massages. The other guy asks Kite if he's going to play in an upcoming tournament in Hawaii. They discuss it, sounding glum. Kite, in a resigned tone of voice, concedes that he's being paid an appearance fee to go and he's getting the trip for free, so he sighs and says something like, "I suppose I have to." The joke, of course, was that most weekend warriors would kill to get a free trip to Hawaii to play golf. To me, however, the advertisers' message backfired and an alternate moral was more clear: if you have to do something too much, even a thing that to most people is a special pleasure can become a chore.
2. Once I was out on a golf course with my brothers, playing 18 holes on a regulation course (as opposed to the adjacent par-three course which was more my speed). As the hands on my watch wore past three hours, I suddenly realized I'd had quite enough of golf: I was thoroughly tired of laboring against my own swing and would have quit for the day right then and there if it were easy and polite to do. Had to grind through two or three more holes after that, though.
3. After Vijay Singh won his Masters, tales were told of his epic appetite for practice. Legend had it that after his win, he went to the range and striped the tee until dark. Wikipedia says, "he is known for his meticulous preparation, often arriving hours before, and staying long after, his tournament rounds to work on his game on the driving range and putting greens."
All these things had a decisive effect on me: I never wanted to be a professional golfer. No, let me re-word that: I wanted to never be a professional golfer! Not that I ever could have been—I have slightly more talent for golf than an armadillo has for hacky-sack. But I never had the slightest desire, even in daydreams. No, thank you: I decided I was perfectly happy to blither my way around a par-three course a handful of times a year. That matched my appetite for the game. (I don't even do that any more, although I miss the camaraderie with my bros.) Sink to your level and embrace it!
It's the same way with pool, if the truth be told. I love pool, and I think it's a fascinating game and I'm better at it than most armadillos. But do I have the discipline and patience to run through my "daily" practice routine every single morning? No, sir, I do not. And I know lots of drills, but an hour spent drilling is fifteen minutes too long for me. Would I have wanted to be a pro pool player? Well, the level of skill of Jayson Shaw or Alexandros Kazakis would be great fun to possess, and it's thrilling to watch. (For me anyway.) But even if I were young I would never have the patience to put in the time it takes to get to that level. And I know it.
Be an amateur
I think I first applied this realization to photography following an after-dinner walk with my son, who was then about six, to get ice cream, back when we lived in the town where Groundhog Day was filmed, Woodstock, Illinois. I had along a Contax Aria camera and a Zeiss Contax 35mm ƒ/2.8 lens (still have the lens) and two rolls of Kodak Tri-X. The evening was beautiful and the light was particularly nice. When I got home I developed the film at the kitchen sink and the next day I proofed the two rolls and in my makeshift basement darkroom and made eight or ten nice prints on 8x10 paper using my amateur-level enlarger*. The handful of prints were a highly competent documentary of that particular walk, but beyond that, nothing particularly special.
I decided at the time that that was about the perfect level of involvement in photographing for me.
I like to photograph—it's an essential part of our medium's culture, and the culture of photography is one of my three or four main interests. But do I have the will and the desire to do it every day, all day? I've always been pretty clear that I don't. Note that there are critics who aren't photographers at all—A.D. Coleman comes to mind—so it's not essential to be a photographer to be immersed in its culture or to write about it.
After that, though, when parents would contact me asking if I thought photography school was a sensible investment for their children, it put me in a quandary. I loved photography school: I feel toward the Corcoran School of Art all the sentimental attachment alums are supposed to feel for their beloved alma mater. It was a great privilege to attend for three years and I enjoyed it intensely. Virtually all my experiences there and all of my many memories are good ones. But no, when viewed without rose-tinted glasses, actually art school is probably a particularly poor allotment of resources if what you're trying to do is equip your progeny to deal with the task of making their way in the world. I felt disloyal to the Corcoran in advising against all it had offered me, and I especially didn't want to pour cold water on any kid's dreams, so I avoided the question when it was possible; but on the other hand I didn't want to lie to parents. A genuine dilemma.
My recommendation to anyone who asks is that one simply should have a thick, tough skin in evaluating and appraising what to do for a living. Photography is more likely to be rewarding—and more pleasurable—if one's practice of it is somewhere in the range between dabbling and a dedicated long-term avocation. We all have to come to terms with where our photography fits in our lives.
Chase the dream
And if someone really wants to do it "all in," full-time, front line, do or die, the first questions to ask, and ask comprehensively, would be about a.) their energy level, and b.) their appetite for work. Those are the two essentials that must be present if you ask me. If both those things are genuinely high, they have a chance. In which case, I tip my hat to them.
Mike
*Which did however have a top-flight lens. I still have not one but two, one for each fist when they bury me I guess!
Book of interest* this week:
A Better Life for their Children by Andrew Feiler, University of Georgia Press, published last month. Read the description at the link—fascinating. It's the story of one of the earliest philanthropic collaborations between Jews and African Americans, one that drove dramatic improvement in black education. The story's told visually. *"Book of Interest" means I haven't seen it, but would like to.
The following image is also a link:
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Richard Skoonberg: "Mike, thank you for promoting Andrew Feiler's wonderful book, A Better Life for Their Children. The story and images describing the legacy of the Rosenwald Schools are both fascinating and deeply moving. Rosenwald was the CEO of Sears in the early twentieth century. He and Dr. Booker T. Washington created a plan to build schools in the rural South so black school children could attend school in the Jim Crow era. To build the schools, the black community put up a third of the money, the local school board put up a third of the money, and Rosenwald put in the final third. These were often one and two-room schoolhouses with one or two teachers with a K-12 curriculum. These schools helped to create a generation that provided the leaders for the Civil Rights movement. Andrew Feiler's book is the first photographic survey of these schools.
"As a side note, Andrew is a member of our local photo-crit group, so we were able to watch this book project from its inception. Currently, many of the images from the book are one display at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in downtown Atlanta."
Mike replies: Thanks for sending me the PDF sample pages from the book, Richard (downloadable here). I enjoyed that.
Geoff Wittig: "That's a perfect summary of what's necessary to find a calling in life. Energy and boundless appetite for work are prerequisites, but love of the process is also key. I love photography, everything from playing with the gear to image capture to making an excellent print. But I couldn't summon the constant energy and enthusiasm to make it a career.
"Medicine, on the other hand, continues to captivate me after almost 40 years. I was that annoyingly eager student you wanted to slap for being so perky. I loved working 100 hour weeks as a resident for the intellectual challenge and the satisfaction of mastering something difficult. I still find myself reading papers outside my specialty because they're so darned interesting. The challenge of being thoroughly competent and continually improving is just as compelling now as it was when I was a newly minted 26-year-old MD. I still love the work, every day. What I did not expect as a swaggering young doc was the emotional toll of seeing patients I've come to know so well aging, becoming frail, and dying. Which is where photography has been a Godsend for me. A chilly morning spent scouting, setting up, and capturing a perfect sunrise panorama grounds me and keeps me sane. So I can keep loving my calling."
A different Mike: "'And if someone really wants to do it "all in," full-time, front line, do or die, the first questions to ask, and ask comprehensively, would be about a.) their energy level, and b.) their appetite for work. Those are the two essentials that must be present if you ask me. If both those things are genuinely high, they have a chance.' You are correct sir. I've been fortunate to have made my living solely by making useful photographs for other people since 1979. The dedication and amount of energy it takes to be even moderately successful for someone without either a trust fund or a hook of some sort is beyond the ability of most people to comprehend. Over the past seven days I worked seventy-six hours covering twelve very important events for my main client. Each event was about two hours long. Then I had another two hours in which I would have to download, organize, rename, edit down from 3–5,000 images (people make funny faces when they speak, and people also blink, and when photographing an event with a few hundred people, having more of a selection is always easier than submitting photos of funny looking people with their eyes closed) a cull of about 120–180, adjust the raw files in ACR, convert to JPEG, and then upload to a web gallery. That gallery would then be linked to a story on their web site. And then do it again that evening, which would get me home at 9:30–10 p.m. after arriving at 8:30 a.m. that morning. The next day, do it again.
"Very few people can grasp the amount of physical work entailed in schlepping the gear, looking for angles, crouching down, hustling from one end of the field to another to get in position, and the level of concentration required to do this both during the event itself and afterward in the post-processing. Amidst all of this, three of the days were well over 90 degrees and very humid. To paraphrase Yogi Berra—photography is 90 percent mental and the other half is physical. You really have to be willing to put in the work that it takes to become proficient and develop a voice, to continuously stay up with the technical challenges and changes, and to always push yourself to do the very best work that you can on each and every assignment. If you don’t, then you’ll eventually find yourself doing something else down the line."
Kenneth Tanaka: "I do not completely subscribe to the vocational prep. I am one of those (old) people who still believes that the primary objective of getting an education is to learn how to learn. Still, one would be foolish to ignore practical economics. Consider that the annual tuition and fees at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) this year top $50,000. (And good luck getting accepted at all!) Now consider how many art jobs are likely to pay anywhere near that amount for an entry position (or even after three years). Now consider that an entry-level programmer at, say, Google will likely easily earn $120,000 or more. Yes, attending a school such as SAIC may enable you to make connections that will propel you after graduation. But not that much. Your best shot is probably to land a faculty job with benefits that offers you summers to pursue being that 'artist' you wanted to be. And some top art school grads do exactly that.
"But I gotta say that Mike's suggestion 'Be an amateur' is perfect advice especially where photography is concerned. Attending art school to learn a trade such as print-making or textile design, might pay-off (in 15–20 years). But it's a lotto-class long shot for photography. 'Photography is more likely to be rewarding—and more pleasurable—if one's practice of it is somewhere in the range between dabbling and a dedicated long-term avocation. We all have to come to terms with where our photography fits in our lives.' Truer words were never writ."
