I’m certain some of you can relate to this. You have a period of time where you’re confident in your abilities to make good photographs, when all of a sudden, with no warning at all, something makes you question if you are in fact good at this thing we call photography. That’s where I’m at right now.
I’ll start off by saying this isn’t a cry for help. I’m not hoping someone, anyone, responds and tells me I am worthy and I am a good photographer, digitally patting my back and telling me I’m a good boy.
The reason I’m writing this is because I think it’s important to be real. It’s all well and good passing on things I’ve learned, sharing positive stories from the industry and so on. But if I don’t share those moments where I question everything I’ve ever done, then I’m not being true to you, nor myself.
My most recent moment of reflection came after interviewing Jon McCormack, a Vice President at Apple and experienced conservation photographer. What he said was simple, and on the surface you’ll likely wonder how something so normal could trigger an internal photographic meltdown in me.
He said, “As creatives we…”
Of course he said a lot more, not only in that passage of speech but in the full 30 minute podcast.
It actually didn’t register in real time. But when I watched the episode back, and thought about it more, my mind began to question: “Is my work really that creative?”
If I point my camera towards a subject and hit the shutter button, I have, by means of process, created a photograph. When I do that consistently, it means I create photographs. But again, am I creative?
Credit: Jon McCormack
If you look at McCormack’s work, it’s not your average nature, wildlife and landscape photography. He finds patterns within things the average person does not see, then presents them in the form of these beautiful frames that feel like paintings.
Then you look at the work of Brittany Markert, as another example. Her 12 year project, In Rooms, is an example of how one can delve into the darkness of the mind and create multilayered stories within a single shot. There’s detail, and there’s clearly a deeper thought process.
Credit: Brittany Markert
Then there’s my work. Here is a cityscape from São Paulo, Brazil. I made it from a rooftop terrace, the skyline sitting on the horizon and a hard shadow cutting the frame in two, a handful of people tucked into the dark side of the divide.
I like this photograph. But when I look at it honestly, I have to ask what I actually did here. The light was already doing the work. The architecture was already created by someone else.
Is it really that hard for someone to find beauty within this world? The average person with a smartphone can see a good shot when it’s laid out in front of them. Is it creative to capture something everyone can already see?
I sat with this for some time, and it was quite sobering to think that the identity I had held for so long was not actually true. If I’m not truly creative, then what am I?
The peace didn’t come straight away. It came somewhere around 1am, after a mild ego death, when I stopped asking whether my photographs looked like McCormack’s or Markert’s and started asking where my decisions actually live. And they’re everywhere…
They’re in the edit, in how I pose a subject, in the ideas I chase for a project, in choosing to stand in that exact spot on that terrace and wait for the shadow to fall just so. Creativity isn’t only the ability to make something nobody has seen before. It’s the constant itch to bring something out of your mind and into the world. I have that itch every single day.
But I don’t want to wrap this up too neatly, because the doubt taught me something too. If I don’t yet feel on a par with the McCormacks or the Markerts, that’s not proof I’m a fraud. It’s proof my ambition is bigger than my current body of work.
And rather than beat myself up about the gap, I’d rather treat it as a direction. It means there’s work I haven’t made yet that I genuinely want to exist, work that stands alone in a saturated market where innovation feels more like a pipe dream than a clear path.
Are you a creative? I’d love to know how you see yourself…
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