If you want to be a photographer in today’s world, you will be bombarded with stories of woe and terror. You’ll hear that no one will want to pay you…….ever. You’ll hear that amateurs charging low rates are pricing professional photographers out of every photographic niche. You’ll hear about how there are thousands, if not millions, of exceptional photographers out there who have never made a penny from their work. You’ll hear about how you’ll need to be exceptionally talented, and extremely lucky, to make it in this business.
The bad news about all of this is that, as far as my limited experience has shown me, all of this is pretty much true. All except the last part. I wrote about how much talent you really need last week. Here are my thoughts on luck.
When I hear someone say that you need to be lucky to get anywhere these days, I don’t think that’s bad news. In fact it’s great news. Being lucky is simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time and we are living in an era when it is more easy than ever before to put yourself in the position to be in the right place at the right time.
Almost exactly a year ago, I was having one of those same doom and gloom conversations about the state of the photographic industry with one of my tutors at LCC. In the midst of this conversation I mentioned an inspiring story I had heard about a photographer named Rosie Hardy. If you don’t know Rosie’s work, go over to her Flickr page and take a look at some of her amazing images. She lives in Manchester and shoots a lot of weddings and hosts workshops on how to achieve images like her more creative work on Flickr.
The story goes like this. Rosie had been creating images since her teens and posting them on Flickr. Her images were so interesting that over the years she had built up an enormous number of followers who favourited and commented on almost every one of her photos. One of them was called “I need to feel your hands all over me” which was a self portrait of Rosie on a bed with lots of arms wrapped around her body.
Last year, as Maroon 5 were looking for artwork for their new album “Hands All Over” they used that great tool of our age, Google, to search for inspiration for the album cover image. Because of Rosie’s big Flickr fan following, her images were highly ranked on Google Images and popped up in a search. Maroon 5 saw her image and liked it so much that they hired her to reshoot a new version of the image for their album cover.
That story absolutely blew my mind. Fifteen years ago, this would have been impossible. Fifteen years ago the path from Manchester based wedding photographer to music industry photographer was a lot more long and winding and I bet more talented photographers got lost along the way.
When I told my tutor about it, this is what he said. “But she just got lucky. That’s one of those one in million coincidences. You can’t plan for that.”
I couldn’t disagree more. Rosie Hardy was lucky. But you can plan for that……and you absolutely should. By producing excellent work, on a regular basis, honing her craft and putting her work out into the world she built a following of people who loved her work and that propelled her up the search rankings and put her in the position to be there when Maroon 5 went looking for album cover inspiration.
(In fact, when Googling the name “Rosie Hardy” I got through 10 pages of Google search results without ever encountering another Rosie Hardy, of which I am sure there are many. This gives great comfort to someone like me, with another fairly common name, although I’m sure it really sucks if you’re also named Rosie Hardy.)
So, do me a favour and start putting yourself in a position to be lucky. You are living through a time in history when it is perfectly possible to drive your own luck…at least where your photography is concerned. Take advantage of it. Work hard. Create great images. Put them out into the world. Enter that competition (even if you think it might be a scam). Post those images on social media (even if you think no one wants to see them). Start blogging. Start tweeting. Create a Facebook Page. Contact that scary blogger and ask to write for them. Set up a stall at an art fair. Stop worrying that someone will steal your images. In fact, encourage people to start sharing them. To paraphrase Tim O’Reilly, “Obscurity is a far greater threat to photographers than piracy.”
In fact, obscurity is a far greater threat to success than pretty much anything else.