I just received a heck of a compliment!
Jul. 31st, 2007 09:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneWhen I started taking photography classes after I'd moved to Alamogordo Fall of '05, I did it for two reasons. One was to get access to a darkroom again. The other was to fill in some gaps in my knowledge and skills. I've now been shooting for about 30 years and I've always had a good eye for composition. The instructor, Sarah, is extremely good. She has a Masters in Fine Arts and has been shooting for as long or longer as I have. And she's infinitely better, largely due to training and more consistent application of that knowledge. At heart I'm still more of a computer geek than photographer (and more lazy bum than either), but photography is something that I really enjoy.
Back in March I had to withdraw from the university when I took the job in Las Cruces, and it really vexed me. I was in Photo II, Advanced Black & White, and we were getting into some great technology: split-filter printing and large format photography. And I had to withdraw just after I'd completed calibrating my equipment and paper and had just begun split-filter printing. I was not happy, but I needed the job.
Tonight I just got off the phone with Bobby. He was in my first class, Photo I (I decided to start from the bottom up to re-hone my skills), and he also has a very good eye. It's been amazingly cool to watch his skill improve as the classes went by.
Well, the compliment that I received was that Sarah told him that she considered Bobby and me to be professional-quality photographers.
That's just so cool.
I was planning on continuing and going for a BFA in Photography, but the job came up and now I'm enrolled in the College of Engineering for a degree in Information and Communications Technology. The latter will help for future computer jobs, the former will not. Perhaps when we're settled somewhere and I have the ICT degree I'll resume the BFA and start shooting a lot more.
ANYWAY, in the course of the conversation we were discussing what the difference was between pro and amateur when it came to photography. The obvious one is that you make your living at shooting, it basically is your full-time job: if you're good, your work sells and you eat. But what if you don't have the competitive drive to be a professional photographer? It's an extremely tough field and you have to really push yourself to make a living at it, and as I said, I'm a lazy bum. Not for me.
So what is the narrow dividing line between professional and amateur?
I think a lot of it is satisfaction with your work. It's easy to be satisfied with your work when you don't know what you're doing wrong, with education comes an end of innocence and you begin understanding what is wrong with what you do. It's the old "you don't know what you don't know", then as you learn, "you know what you don't know", etc. The more you learn, the more you see the flaws in your own work. But you also know why they are flaws and you can begin self-correction and improvement.
Bobby recently shot an event and did a hundred frames or more, out of that he got ten or so that he was satisfied with. The rest he put into a "junk" pile for anyone who wanted them. His wife picked one print up and asked what was wrong with it, he replied that it was too blue. She couldn't see the color shift, but having spent a few months in the darkroom printing and re-printing negatives while adjusting color balance, you pick up subtleties of perception that most people don't have.
Back to the satisfaction thing, I remember one print that I was working on during lab. I took it out to show Sarah to get her opinion on an adjustment that I was going to make for it. I knew what I was going to do, I just wanted to bounce it off her to make sure that I was on the right track. She confirmed that I was doing the right thing, but then commented that what I was working on wouldn't fulfill the requirements of the current assignment. I told her that didn't matter because this print was for me, I had others for the assignment. It kind of stunned her momentarily.
And that's what I've always done: I shoot to please myself. If others like what I think is good, then that's just bonus.
Back in March I had to withdraw from the university when I took the job in Las Cruces, and it really vexed me. I was in Photo II, Advanced Black & White, and we were getting into some great technology: split-filter printing and large format photography. And I had to withdraw just after I'd completed calibrating my equipment and paper and had just begun split-filter printing. I was not happy, but I needed the job.
Tonight I just got off the phone with Bobby. He was in my first class, Photo I (I decided to start from the bottom up to re-hone my skills), and he also has a very good eye. It's been amazingly cool to watch his skill improve as the classes went by.
Well, the compliment that I received was that Sarah told him that she considered Bobby and me to be professional-quality photographers.
That's just so cool.
I was planning on continuing and going for a BFA in Photography, but the job came up and now I'm enrolled in the College of Engineering for a degree in Information and Communications Technology. The latter will help for future computer jobs, the former will not. Perhaps when we're settled somewhere and I have the ICT degree I'll resume the BFA and start shooting a lot more.
ANYWAY, in the course of the conversation we were discussing what the difference was between pro and amateur when it came to photography. The obvious one is that you make your living at shooting, it basically is your full-time job: if you're good, your work sells and you eat. But what if you don't have the competitive drive to be a professional photographer? It's an extremely tough field and you have to really push yourself to make a living at it, and as I said, I'm a lazy bum. Not for me.
So what is the narrow dividing line between professional and amateur?
I think a lot of it is satisfaction with your work. It's easy to be satisfied with your work when you don't know what you're doing wrong, with education comes an end of innocence and you begin understanding what is wrong with what you do. It's the old "you don't know what you don't know", then as you learn, "you know what you don't know", etc. The more you learn, the more you see the flaws in your own work. But you also know why they are flaws and you can begin self-correction and improvement.
Bobby recently shot an event and did a hundred frames or more, out of that he got ten or so that he was satisfied with. The rest he put into a "junk" pile for anyone who wanted them. His wife picked one print up and asked what was wrong with it, he replied that it was too blue. She couldn't see the color shift, but having spent a few months in the darkroom printing and re-printing negatives while adjusting color balance, you pick up subtleties of perception that most people don't have.
Back to the satisfaction thing, I remember one print that I was working on during lab. I took it out to show Sarah to get her opinion on an adjustment that I was going to make for it. I knew what I was going to do, I just wanted to bounce it off her to make sure that I was on the right track. She confirmed that I was doing the right thing, but then commented that what I was working on wouldn't fulfill the requirements of the current assignment. I told her that didn't matter because this print was for me, I had others for the assignment. It kind of stunned her momentarily.
And that's what I've always done: I shoot to please myself. If others like what I think is good, then that's just bonus.
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-01 06:10 pm (UTC)According to my job, I'm a professional photographer. Technically, though, I'm a professional Photoshop expert who happens to also be an artist, so if you set the technical stuff up for me I can do the compositional pretty well. Since our primary work is studio & set piece for high schools, I can fake it pretty well.
Most of the time, though, I'm back-of-house. 'Cause, well, high schoolers. Sometimes you just need the power of Photoshop. ("Don't bother with the rude gestures; we WILL remove them. And you, if you give us too much backtalk.")