+ You can’t do it all, but you can do one thing intensely.
+ Don’t be afraid of beauty, but don’t make it your main subject or content. The same is true for light.
+ Making images and thinking about your images need to be respected as separate processes done at separate times.
+ Photography does not require a good camera, the perfect light, or enough time. If photography is something you should be doing, you’ll make images on the days when you don’t have these things.
+ Carry your camera everywhere. A good image can be made anywhere.
+ To paraphrase the commencement speaker at my undergraduate graduation who was paraphrasing someone else: talent in art is about as important as tits on a boar. Success on every level - from personal satisfaction to your first Guggenheim - is work, work, and more work.
+ Give yourself permission to make photographs without prejudging them. You don’t have to show them to anyone. If you’re not sure if you should take the picture or not, take it.
+ Put down your camera and spend time just looking - frequently.
+ Take a few weeks off every year – at least.
+ Photography has strong personalities, friendships of benefit, questionable minds with power, and straight-up assholes just like every other business. Many good photographers are not only good, they are also strategic and cutthroat. Exposure depends - to a degree - on developing connections and on what sells. You’ll have to market yourself; no one is out there waiting to discover your work. Sharpen your elbows as well as your vision.
+ Turn outside of photography for instruction and inspiration – go to movies, operas and the theater. Have music on while you work at home. Read all the time. Digest slowly.
+ Practical advice: Find a second source of income. Learn basic carpentry, become an EMT or study basic investing.
+ Travel every opportunity you can, especially during your 20’s.
+ We have witnessed an explosion of great photographers in this generation, but it’s an explosion of too frequently similar great photography. Understand longer cycles of art and have faith in understanding and developing your own innate drives within the medium.
+ Decisions by juries and committee are notoriously fickle and are frequently a compromise between several people on someone / something. Learn from rejections and listen to criticism, but don’t pin your sense of worth as a person or photographer on these things. There’s a degree of correlation between quality and success in the photography world, but it is not a meritocracy nor is it rational.
+ Build a community – photography is a game more fun played with other photographers. Go beyond yourself so that you rejoice in and actively help the success of others.
+ The best photographs involve you on all three levels simultaneously: head, heart, and sex. [tip of the cap to Nicholas Nixon]
+ The best photographers are students all of their life; photography can never be completely learned.
+ Finally and absolutely most importantly, laugh - and don’t be too hard on yourself, either. Photography is less serious than we usually think.
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