It Is Far Better To Be the Only, Than To Be The “Best”
Well, that is going to need a bit of unpacking, isn’t it?
Commercial photographers are always looking for the ‘best”. The best lens, sensor, card, lighting equipment. Wanting the best is a sign of professionalism and is totally understandable since we are constantly called on to do high-quality work.
We keep hearing that if you are the best photographer, you will get more work. We strive to get better and better believing that will be the golden ticket to getting work. We get clients by being the best.
The best.
What does that mean to you? What it means to me is probably far different. And what it means to that guy over there or the lady in the art director’s chair, ‘best’ may be something we will never know.
In fact, “best” seems a bit mercurial, hard to pin down, and ridiculously hard to define.
Yet we seek it at seemingly all costs.
Best… has no global definition. Best means nothing without context, and we cannot control the outcome of that context like we think we can.
For instance:
Have you ever seen a listicle of the “Best Rock Songs Ever”?
I just did a quick Google search and found three music sites with that title.
The first site has;
1. Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze
2. Queen and David Bowie, Under Pressure
3. Rolling Stones, Start Me Up
The second site has:
1. Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody
2. Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven
3. Rolling Stones, I Can’t Get No Satisfaction
The third site has;
The Darkness, I Believe In A Thing Called Love
AC/DC, Rock N Roll Train
After Bridge, Blackbird
Do YOU agree with any of those lists? I certainly don’t. There is no mention of Bread, or the Carpenters? Seriously?
See what I mean. Really tough to know what best is when nobody can even agree on something as simplistic as rock music.
What is best for you may not be best for me.
But ‘ONLY’ is something we can certainly describe. It has a definition.
But wait you say… “I cannot be the only photographer or even the only photographer that has done something no one else has. C’mon, man… tell me what the heck you mean”.
I am glad to.
Of course, you cannot be instantly unique. You have to grow into some of that uniqueness. We call that building a style. And that takes time.
Rodney Smith built a style that no one can copy.
Herb Ritts was a wonderfully unique photographer.
Duane Michals is an iconic photographer… can you see why?
OK, but how do YOU do it?
You become unique doing something most others won’t do, or cannot do.
What are your strengths?
What are you most interested in?
How can you create an opportunity to make images that would be somewhat rare, or at least not something we all see all the time.
If you are a still-life shooter, how can you put something in front of your lens that is a challenge to shoot or hasn’t been shot very often? How can you shoot something we have seen before, but with a bit of a unique spin on it?
Perhaps you photograph the re-emergence of vegetables that have not been seen in decades? Or fragments of meteorites? Or a series on the discovery of some new kind of something. How about the stuff you find along the main street in your town?
Bet you are the only one doing that.
Maybe a portrait shooter could find the top 25 chefs in their city, or put together a series of WWII vets with their grandkids and great-grandkids. Maybe we find a way to shoot the people who never think of themselves as heroes doing exactly what they do. Imagine doing ten ride-along trips with paramedics and being able to focus on them as they save lives.
Not too many photographers doing that — ESPECIALLY since you are not going to do it like someone else, you are going to bring what makes YOUR work significant to the images.
Anything that has been done before could be done again — YOUR WAY — the only way that YOU could show the imagery.
Do a book.
Doing a book shows enthusiasm, dedication, work ethic, the ability to discern, edit, to spend the energy that must be spent in order to make a book.
Most photographers will never do that. They will find a hundred really unique reasons why they can’t make a book. The hard work of doing it keeps them in front of Netflix. Consuming media doesn’t make you unique.
Making media can.
What if you got access to somewhere that most people cannot get access to? Or props that most cannot get ahold of. Or people that are usually not interested in having their photos taken.
All you really have to do is to put a frame around what you do. Give it context. Tie the images together somehow and the result becomes the ‘only’.
I didn’t promise it was an easy exercise, but I emphasize that it is an IMPORTANT exercise.
Now, let’s tie it back to the idea of being the best. Being the ‘only’ does not alleviate you from constantly trying to get better at your craft. You still have to do that. Crappy photographs of something unique are still crappy. (Even if you shoot them on a really awesome old medium format film camera… just sayin”.)
But if you do the hard work to find ways for your style, subject matter, post-processing, presentation, or something else within your own ecosystem that sets your images apart from the ordinary ‘Instagram dreck’, you can and will see more interest. From clients, from friends, and from peers.
Thanks for reading.
Here are two articles I think you may enjoy.
What to Charge for Commercial Photography
I Love to Get High on My Motorcycle and Make Photographs
Thanks for reading.
You can find me at www.dongiannatti.com and www.project52prosystem.com
