Passion & drive
How much do you want it?
A budding photographer contacted me last week, a lovely message how much they admired my work, my honesty and my drive. I offered them an opportunity to tag along at a wedding, no expectation on them to perform, no 'charge for mentoring', simply an opportunity to learn - their response? "That's a bit far away from me but I'd love it if you would let me know if you've anything a bit closer to home, I would rather not have to travel if possible".
At that point this lovely person was cut off, I didn't even respond to that message. To me that stinks of "I want to take the easy route", you dear sir who I say I admire, I like that you’ve done all the hard work, now can you lay it all on a plate for me, so I get all the benefits without any of the effort.
Doors don’t open themselves.
When I started out I messaged every wedding photographer I looked up to, offering to do anything just for the opportunity to see how they worked, jees I'd have polished their shoes and travelled any distance to do it. Most didn't even reply to my messages, everyone else simply added me to a mailing list, so I could pay to go on their training courses.
Now that I’ve spent 9 years of bloody hard work getting to the place I am now, I fully understand why people wouldn’t just freely hand their secrets to me off the back of an email being sent to them, why should they? I guess my point here is, if you are offered an opportunity to learn take it - they don’t come along often and certainly not for free!
Drive, hunger, determination when you're starting off - they're important, more than important. Certainly in a world where people are looking for n easy 'in', a shortcut with minimal effort or somehow think owning a camera and setting up a website makes them a wedding photographer…it doesn’t, that’s the easy bit.
The people who put the effort in (and put it in consistently) are going to get ahead and stay ahead. Even the people you think have ‘made it’ are still working damn hard behind the scenes, when you’re asleep they’re probably working, when you’re sat there watching tv, they’re probably working - the old equation of talent + repeated hard work = success stands very true.
Now then, not wishing to put a downer on things, there are going to be a lot of ups and downs, it’s an extremely competitive industry and every year there’s a new wave of eager photographers who want to make some extra cash by shooting weddings, you’ll see people who (if you’re being honest) are pretty shit at photography but seem to bag a lot of weddings (hint - they spend all their effort learning to market themselves rather than photography)…don’t worry about them, they won’t last long. Some days you’ll lose out on an ideal sounding couple to another photographer because they’ve out priced you by half, thrown in a whole load of free stuff and basically won on price - don’t worry about it, things like that happen and the reality is anyone who shoots a wedding for peanuts is going to be a monkey…all you can do is try to educate couples as to the real value of what you do, the quality you provide. It’s not all doom and gloom though, not by a long stretch, this is an incredibly rewarding career, full of joy and accomplishment and you’re doing something incredibly important for people during one of the most important times of their lives.
So my question I guess is, how much do you want it? If you’re looking for the 'easy' there are people like me (and plenty of others) who are more than happy to outwork you every single day, people who are still awake at 3am in the morning, learning, practising, writing posts like this (like I am), people sat on a bus watching youtube channels to expand their mind, sat in a coffee shop not on facebook but reading an actual book about being a photographer, it’s really a question as to who wants it more.
If you want it, if you really want it you've gotta work harder than the person next to you. Otherwise, while you're sleeping, watching tv, wasting time - we're at it, thinking photography, improving ourselves, out shooting every day, honing our skills and grinding away. I can't remember the last time I went to bed before 1am - if I've not got my head in a book or honing my skills I'm watching something photography or art related.
Sure, on the surface I might be completely blasé about the whole photography thing, how I approach weddings and appear to be completely relaxed about everything, but you know what, that's because outside of actually shooting a wedding I'm grafting my arse off, I'm putting the hours in that no-one ever sees and that allows me the luxury of being relaxed come 'game time', it's all in the preparation.
Natural ability gets you so far but nothing replaces good old-fashioned hard work. There's an old saying when I taught martial arts - "Train hard, fight easier" same applies to everything.
Anyway it's 3.30am now and I'm really knackered, goodnight !
