The Photographer's learning process

15 years ago or so I had my last job. The experience of working for a corporation was uneventful, that is until the day I was told my contract was coming to an end. Now what? “Well, you will go to the online agency site that looks after the online marketing to finish your term, and perhaps they will teach you other skills while you are there”, my boss told me one afternoon at the end of my workday. Somehow, I learn from previous experiences that this turn of events always lead to some unexpected road, which I will have to decide to take or head in a different direction.

 I learned that life has a funny way of narrowing your path to what surely is your destiny and it is scary to think, what is next? The day I finished my contract, was the day I realized I was done with jobs. For me, working in an environment filled with cubicles, talking to strangers, taking orders, was an anxiety-filled existence. Suddenly, I decided I didn’t want to be scared to talk to people, to be given a task I may not know how to complete. I decided not to have a job again. I decided to take the less scary route, I decided to work for myself.

 That moment brought me face to face with the 20 hours a day, the unpaid internship of my own destiny. Every moment of every day I fought distractions, laziness, exhaustion, lack of focus, desperation. Somewhere in that haze I found myself thinking that I have worked this hard and therefore I CAN NOT FAIL. Did I make it? Nope.

 I was too busy surviving that I did not set a path, where was I going? A path is a road to which you know where it leads and to where you wish it to end. I ended at a street I did not necessarily intend to. I found my ability to create, my strength to persevere, and the blind trust that I will end up in a place less scary than a cubicle surrounded by people that scared me. I found photography at the intersection of survival and creativity and at that moment, survival was successful enough.

 A photographer learning process is not meant to learn about the technical skills, which camera is better, and what lens works best, those are details that do not teach you to photograph anything or anyone. Photography is the life lessons that teach us how to see the world and what to see in the world and show it to ourselves in a print, in a digital file, on the back of the LCD, or in the faces of your audience. The learning process that you need in photography is to learn to be a photographer with some insight into the world you explore every time you press that button. Every click is a moment into that vision you have learned to see uniquely as a Photographer.

Get Out of Your Way

For a long time I studied other photographers like Joe McNally, Chris Knight, Joey Lawrence and in the process of learning, inadvertently, I was also conditioning myself to get in my own way of creativity. I have followed these photographers, I analyzed their approach, composition, color grading and somewhere the visual got in the way of the inner workings of the humanity of their work. What did I like about their work? 

I liked the way they capture their subject. I liked where they captured their subject and I devoted so much attention to how their images looked. I took all that information and tried to emulate it through trial and error. I noticed the richness in Joe McNally imagery, he told every story in a vibrant effervescent way. Joey Lawrence’s de-saturated treatment to color grading of such impactful stories as We Came From Fire gave the story realism as if the color would get in the way of emotion. Chris Knight approach to contrast and dramatic portraiture is based on the master painters and he is superb at maintaining that classic portraiture lighting. I tried and got lost in trying to emulate the look and feel of their work.

Every one of these amazing photographers have a unique visual representation of their subject, but more than that, it is a visual representation of their essence of the intangible aspect of their human exploration and experience. I lost focus of that element. I emulated for too long, I replicated their color grade, experimented with variations of their approach, meanwhile, I was getting further and further away from self-exploration.

There comes a time when you, as a photographer, should stop learning from others and start learning from yourself. You should accept what you are and how you capture it. There is something about your approach that may be unique and valuable and you should embrace it. So, what is it? What have you learned from your own work?

You should go back and look at your work and see what is consistent. What are you embracing subconsciously? It may be that you embrace shadows, or subject matter, is it form or essence? Is the story over the technical, is it the color or style? If you are like me, you had no idea. You needed someone to point it out to you, someone who saw you for you and not in comparison with others. That is when my view changed and I started to look inside rather than outside. How will my work turn out from that moment on? It is a process and a journey, stay tuned.