What is your recipe for success?
Do you measure your success?
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Anyone who takes photographs does so primarily for fun. Of course, I am talking about amateur photographers and not professionals, although I hope they still enjoy photography.
As well as enjoyment, appreciation can also be an important element. This depends on how and what you photograph and what you do with it afterwards. I suppose you also show your photos to others. I always remember a quote from a mentor who said that you don't take photographs to put them in a drawer.
When you show your photos to others - whether they are close friends that you show prints to, or you share your photos on social media or elsewhere online - you will get responses to them, and with that some kind of appreciation will roll out. Compliments, likes, comments, both positive and negative, of course. Does this determine your success?
What is success?
All these reactions to your photos... is that your success? For some it might be. Hoping for as many likes as possible. Looking with envy at photographers with what they consider to be inferior photos that get tons of reactions and likes. This does not seem like a desirable situation to me. Photos do not fit well into a competition. I think it can only make you sour. Comparing yourself with others in this area is not the best idea anyway. I would recommend studying others and learning from them. But always keep your own situation in mind.
What is your recipe for success?
Can I tell you? Do I have a secret formula? No, I can't really say. Everyone has different standards and criteria by which to measure success.
But I can tell you how I measure my success. I try to make photographs that 'feel' like my own. Photographs in which I think my ideas, my opinion, my drive and my enjoyment of making the picture come through. Photos in which I more or less reveal myself. Photos that have a clear signature.
I measure my success by my presence in the photo!
That’s it for this newsletter.
Till next time,
P.S. this post was originally posted almost two years ago when Darkrooms had just a few subscribers. It got 18 views and no comments. As this message is still valid and perhaps even more in this age of social media I decided to adapt the post slightly and repost it.
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Comments especially praise, are of course wonderful, and I appreciate looks as much as likes because any sort of engagement is surely at least a small measure of success. But beyond public recognition, I know an image is successful when I review it a year or more later and still see what I saw in it when I made the photo. It continues to work for me on a personal level. This detached recognition after the passage of time is when I acknowledge a photo's success.
Success imho is that faint afterglow that hums in my brain when someone tells me they like my picture