Excuses, excuses ... they just don't cut it

There are no excuses. Either a picture is interesting or it isn't, and it does not matter what the photographer had to endure to get it, what skills they've got, how many hours they had to wait, how cold they got, why something happened or didn't happen - it's all irrelevant. The only thing that counts is the final image.

Many of us have been there. We go to great pains to get an image and the final result is OK, but just not a hundred percent. The image goes into the portfolio and we keep it there because we know just how hard it was to get it. All the time it should actually have been binned. Just not good enough.

You've got to be ruthlessly honest, your own hardest critic and then you've got to go out and find tough experienced photographers, curators and picture editors, and subject yourself to their harshest critques. Not all of them will be right but you'll soon learn which are your weaker images.

Cut them out of your portfolio. No excuses.

You've also got to look beyond the merely technical. When I started I rejected many images in an almost mechanical way because they did not live up to technical dogmatic requirements. Yet they had something special, something that touched people. I've retrieved them from the bin of obscurity and they're now back in my portfolios.

So you've got to really look at every aspect of an image, but never consider the effort it took to get it.

Paul Indigo

Comments

Overcoming creative block and self doubt

Every photographer, for that matter every creative, I've ever met comes to a point when they're not happy with the work they're producing. The pendulum between creative highs and dry spells swings continuously. For some the cycle is long and the bouts are quite mild for others the feeling of doubt about their work can be a crushing experience which returns all to frequently. It's actually quite healthy to have these periods of doubt because it can often be the beginning of something new and interesting which takes you further than you thought possible. Creatives in the commercial world have to always perform and although they may agree looking back that they've had a few patches where their work was less good, they always seem to bounce back. A very few creative geniuses deliver such high quality work that their poorest attempts still surpass the rest of us. But I have never heard of anyone, from tortured soul of Van Gogh to the supreme showman and genius, Salvador ...

What You Photograph Reveals How You Think

Photography is often described as a way of seeing. Less often do we talk about it as a way of thinking. What you choose to photograph, and just as importantly what you ignore, quietly mirrors how your mind works. Some photographers are drawn to faces, micro-expressions, emotional spikes. Others chase atmosphere, light, mood. Then there are those who gravitate towards structure, systems, order, the invisible logic holding a scene together. None of this is accidental. The camera becomes a sorting tool. It reveals what your brain prioritises. Where others see chaos, you might see alignment. Where some look for drama, you look for balance. Geometry, repetition, flow, layers, these aren’t just visual preferences, they’re cognitive ones. Strong graphic images tend to come from people who think spatially. Who notice how things relate before they notice what they mean. Lines before labels. Structure before story. And yet, the best images rarely stop there. They gain depth when human pres...

Is professional photography still a viable career?

I am not against amateurs and semi-professionals selling their photography. It's a great way to earn some extra cash. However I am concerned about the level of high quality published work and the standards that clients and the public accept these days. It seems that just about everyone is a photographer. The line between amateur enthusiast and professional is fuzzy to say the least. Photography enthusiasts are selling their images through stock libraries and microstock websites, directly to magazines or through their own and third party sites. They're accepting commissions to shoot weddings, being hired to shoot for magazines and selling fine art prints from their websites. They're teaching photography on the weekend and guiding photographic holidays and safaris. Photography became accessible to the masses with the first non-expert cameras and the famous Kodak slogan"You press the button, we do the rest." The digital camera age has taken the whole thing to a ne...

Beyond the obvious

Search This Blog