Ten Thousand Exposures
“Your first ten thousand photographs are your worst”
-Henri Cartier-Bresson
Photography is a journey. Any photographer will tell you that. What some of them don’t mention is that it’s a grueling, drawn-out journey that will probably make you want to quit half a dozen times. Or ten.
All photographers start out terrible. You never see our old stuff because we delete it, or have ‘lost’ it altogether. Trust me, we’re sparing you. We spend years trying to get good enough to call ourselves ‘photographers’ and the impostor syndrome never goes away once we do.
Say two people, Sara and Jordan, pick up a camera and start shooting. They are both awful at it to begin with. Fast forward five years and Sara is a photographer while Jordan brings their camera to family parties and on vacation. Or they just sold it on Ebay.
The difference between Sara and Jordan isn’t that Sara has ‘talent’ or was ‘better’ than Jordan, the difference is Sara kept trying.
So that’s it? That’s all you need to become a photographer? Just pick up a camera and shoot 10,000 times and *boom* professional?
Yes and no. You don’t just need to keep shooting. You need to keep learning. Keep pushing yourself. Learn the rules and then break them. Study the greats and copy them. Reject them. Take 200 pictures of the same object and go through them to realize there is a technical error in every. single. image. Go through thousands of terrible photos. Figure out where you went wrong. Where you went right. Invest in equipment. Limit yourself. Challenge yourself. Give up on other hobbies to pursue photography.
Easy.
Anyone can do it.
But not everyone wants to. And that is what defines a photographer.
A photographer is someone with a burning passion for photography. They are compelled to take photos. They can’t help it. They make sacrifices, invest time and money into their craft because they cannot imagine letting go of it.
Becoming a photographer is hard. It takes passion. No, it takes obsession. It takes the willingness to drag yourself out of bed at 4am for sunrise. To give up luxuries to afford better equipment. To turn down social engagements in favor of photography because you must take photos.
You can be a photographer.
If you truly want to be.
I assure you,
you will get there.