You don’t have it figured out. And neither do we.
You are slowly crawling through your photographic journey. Day after day. Week after week. Photograph after photograph. Instagram post after Instagram post. You may be getting better with each shot you take. You may be getting more attention with each published edit. You may even be earning more with your photography this year than you did last year. But you still feel like you are just a speck in the dirt compared to all of the famous, experienced, and/or rich photographers out there. Seeing their follower counts makes you at best hopeless for what lies in the future and at worst worthless. It seems like they’ve got it all figured out and are now just cashing in on the fame/notoriety/customer base. But let me tell you a thing. You are not alone in this.
The vast majority of photographers, or anyone to be honest, are doing their best to appear like they know what they are doing. The sad truth of modern social media is that the goal is to look as successful as possible, the happiest of them all, the one to follow. I can’t even tell how many messages I have received in the last few years asking me “How to make it big”, “How to become a successful photojournalist” or in a similar spirit. Every single time I have to disappoint with my response. Because I have no idea either.
I might seem like I’ve “made it” or that “I’ve got it all figured out” on the outside with all my journeys to a war-ravaged country followed by complete photo essays but let me be clear on one thing. I often just grasp at what cards I’m dealt and try to work around them as best as I can. My photography has not gotten me a single advantage in the professional world. I have not made a single penny from it. The most I make from photography is a symbolic charge from an occasional wedding I shoot once a year for yet another friend of my wife. None of my stories were ever published by a major media company, or a publisher.
Like the vast majority of photographers in the world, I have a job that requires me to spend at least five, sometimes six, days a week working. Outside of that job, I have a family that needs me at home on a daily basis. A daughter I absolutely adore spending time with. I do not have a lot of time to photograph what I’d love to. I make time whenever I can but I often just simply can not. I go to work an hour or two early every once in a while so I can spend time outside in the morning to shoot some street pictures. I leave work and spend an hour or two in the city with my camera at the cost of not seeing my little girl for the last few minutes before she goes to sleep maybe once a week. I save money, vacation days, and overtime hours to be able to travel to a different country to work on a story I feel close to even though I could be spending that time just relaxing on a vacation.
The hardest part is balancing my passion for photography and storytelling with being with my family. My baby girl isn’t even two years old so every day is different. Each day brings something new. She was so much bigger when I returned after those two weeks in Ukraine I wrote about here. It is not easy not seeing her every once in a while, but I do my best and constantly balance my life to pursue what I feel is my calling and be the best possible father I can be.
Some people read the story I brought back with me, some only scrolled through the photographs, and many haven’t even seen it. But many who did have sent me amazing messages of encouragement or even gratitude for waking them up to go out and work on their own passion projects. There were some though who kept asking the same questions I mentioned earlier. And my answer to that is always this. Don’t do it for fame. Don’t do it for money. Do it for the passion of photography in itself. If you love photography, you can always find an excuse to pursue it. And if you truly love photography, you will keep pursuing it regardless of your results or outcomes in terms of whatever you see as success.
Apologies in advance for the Thanos reference but I honestly used to think I’ll finally rest and watch the Sun set over a grateful universe once I hit “X” amount of followers, or once I’ll be effortlessly selling out gallery shows after gallery shows, or when I have a bestseller book filled with my photographs. Those all sound incredible, but I stopped using those to define success for myself. Sure I won’t mind and I know I’ll be pretty stoked when that happens. But I won’t beat myself up if that never happens.
What matters to me now is to just enjoy the journey and figure it all out as I’m moving along. In the end, everybody does. Just roll with the punches and make the most of your time on this beautiful space rock.
A little side note from yesterday. I haven’t been out on my own to shoot in a while and I knew I really should. I can’t let my “creative muscle” shrink and lose track. I need to photograph continuously or I might fall out of it. It has happened a few times before and climbing back into that saddle can be tough. But I felt incredibly unmotivated and lacked the energy to do so. So after literal hours of convincing myself and being a sleepy couch potato, I finally forced myself out of the door and spent at least an hour in the city. Just one hour. It’s not a lot but I needed it. I managed to take a decent chunk of images I was actually satisfied with. Here they are:
