Some great advice...

I literally just came across this piece of advice for aspiring young photographers from Magnum on Ideas Tap from photographer Christopher Anderson:

"Forget about the profession of being a photographer. First be a photographer and maybe the profession will come after. Don’t be in a rush to pay your rent with your camera. Jimi Hendrix didn’t decide on the career of professional musician before he learned to play guitar. No, he loved music and created something beautiful and that THEN became a profession. Larry Towell, for instance, was not a “professional” photographer until he was already a “famous” photographer. Make the pictures you feel compelled to make and perhaps that will lead to a career. But if you try to make the career first, you will just make shitty pictures that you don’t care about."

You know when you read something and you have a bit an internal lightbulb moment? Well I just had one when I read that!! From an outside perspective, what Christopher said may seem quite obvious but if I am honest I have never actually sat down and thought explicitly about my own work in those terms before. I was trained as a commercial, media photographer rather than a fine art photographer, neither of which is better or worse than the other but I have however developed a terrible habit of always wondering how the work that I do could make me a living as I always strive to make money from doing something that I am passionate about. I have always considered this was a very good way of thinking, after all, we all need money to live, but after reading this I think that I am probably going about things the wrong way for the longterm. It's not that I don't take photos and make photofilms that I care about, in fact all the work on my website is of subject matters that I feel very passionately about. I think my point here is that I could work on MORE projects and take BETTER photos and make BETTER photofilms if it wasn't for the internal dialogue that goes on inside that on reflection is actually very stifling, thinking about the career before the photos have even been taken rather than taking the photos and letting the rest follow naturally...great food for thought.

As they say, 'a blog post is sweeter with a photo', so here is a portrait of Lady Gaga from Christopher Anderson himself, to who I owe a lot of thanks!