I was looking at the website of an incredible extreme sports photographer today, and was amazed to find that sometimes the risk he runs is greater than the athlete. Either way the photos he takes are breathtaking, and he finds his way into spots of the world few others go, and were they to do that could not photograph it the same way he does. He walks up to nature, he looks it in the eye, and then takes a photo of her with puny man in it. It’s hard to measure just how awesome that is, because in the risks he takes he understands the value of creating important work.
In sports it’s a little the same way. There’s something about wading into the fray that is absolutely exhilarating, and scary. You might lose, you might win, you’ll probably get hurt either way, and sometimes by your own team. There is a lot of training that goes into becoming an athlete, but the crazy thing is, athletes don’t usually train to turn pro at every single sport out there, but pick one and train hard to become the best. They immerse themselves into the sport by learning, training, working out, practicing, watching their diet closely, monitoring their health, and making choices. Their choices usually come down to things like I just mentioned, so the choices for a photographer sound very different: learning angles, perspective, lighting, frames, rules of thirds, bread and butter photography, human nature and emotions, camera gear, best camera bags and inspiration and motivation. Thing is, athletes take all the stuff they do, and channel it into one sport, and while a lot of what they learn can apply to more than one game, like the stuff about diets, discipline health and choices, it’s still focused into one place.
That’s what I’m getting at here. Most of the “rules” of photography can apply to every different kind of photography, but if you can channel your energy and focus into learning one thing and becoming the best possible at it, you’ll be doing so much more than you could do if you just dabble around in every different avenue of photography. What if you’d go photograph what you are interested in, and get to be as excellent as you can be? There’s something I’ve noticed about photographers. When they’re taking pictures of what they absolutely love to take pictures of, their work takes on this quality, and edge of super-talent and power that sets their work apart, but even the best photographers can take mediocre shots of something they don’t really like shooting. Don’t take it wrong, it’s still excellent work from an artistic standpoint, but that little something of passionate creativity is missing. There’s no shame in doing a few things well, there’s no shame in doing a lot of things well, but there is a lot of shame in doing nothing well because we think we have to do everything we can. The odds against us learning to do everything incredibly well in a lifetime are high. Here is the viewpoint of one writer, which seems to fit this topic perfectly.
“the hardest thing for me to acknowledge is that I might not have a talent in something. You see, we have been taught that we can do anything and have forgotten that we shouldn’t do everything.
maybe it’s ok to find one thing and get good at it. someone sitting next to us may be really good at the thing we can’t do well, and suddenly we have this world that works together. when we focused on the one thing we can do well or learned to do well, the level of skill and talent in the world just went up, because now it’s not just a bunch of people doing many mediocre things, but many people doing great things. See the difference? Focus on that one thing. Go. “ -Anonymous