Ian Furniss Photography » Blog Archive » Thinking For The Future

Thinking For The Future

Some mornings you wake up and it seems like the world is stacked against you. You wake up filled with enthusiasm, desperate to head on out and create great art, but then you look out of the window. The skies are grey, and a quick visit to weather.com shows every paragraph filled with the dreaded words ‘torrential’ and ‘rain’. Another day ruined!! Living in Manchester (the world capital of rain) this is a scenario that occurs far too often for mental well-being but, the sliver-lining to the clouds hovering overhead is that you soon learn it doesn’t have to mean your day is ruined after all.

There are a number of things you can do when the rain threatens to ruin your day and some of them are obvious and well publicised .. switch to black and white .. take atmospheric shots of rain dripping down windows, etc … but there are other things we can do as well and they’re just as essential as practicing or adding shots to the gallery. Perhaps even more so.

It’s often been said that taking photos is only a small part of being a photographer and that is certainly true so, when you make the decision to turn pro or even semi-pro, it makes sense to have a plan of exactly what you want to do. For each branch of photography you look at there are different requirements that will to some degree determine your plan of action. You may want to specialise in wedding photography for example and that will require different skills to being a landscape photographer. You may decide to back up your income by shooting stock or running seminars and again, these will each require different skills. Once you decide though, it would be folly to think that your work is done and that you can sit back, relax, and wait for the pay cheques to roll in.

Think about what your choices mean. Ask yourself “What do I need to be and do to excel in this field?”. Take running seminars for example. It seems pretty obvious to say that to run a seminar and teach people photography that you’ll need to know how to take a good photo, but you’re also going to need to be a good communicator to get the ideas and theories across. Doing that effectively is a skill like any other and whilst we as photographers will often say that ‘you can’t just pick up a camera and call yourself a photographer’, by the same rule you can’t just open your mouth and call yourself an orator or teacher. It requires practice. Lots of it!

Try writing a blog. It would be nice if you could get people other than your mum and your gran to read it as well, but if you can’t, it’s not really that important in the long-run because writing alone is great practice and a great oportunity for you to develop a style and a range of subjects that at some stage you’ll want to pass on through your seminars. Heck, you may even decide a few years down the line that you want to write a book and at that point you’ve already written the outline of a few of the chapters and you just need to rewrite them in your more experienced and improved style. Nothing is ever wasted.

Don’t want to do seminars or write a book? Perhaps portrait photography is more your thing or product photography. Whilst there’s no substitute for putting in studio time, not everyone can afford it on a regular basis. Maybe you want to hone your lighting skills or you don’t fully understand that nice new flash unit your significant other bought you for Christmas. Well, you don’t have to hire a studio to do that. I learnt the basics of using flash by taking photos of things like the vacuum cleaner, bowls of pot pourri on the table, all sorts of things. If that doesn’t sound ideal, you can’t relate to the shadows from abstract objects and you really need a face to work with, well how about popping down to your local shop outfitters where you can pick up a mannequin head for under £40? Not perfect but stick a cheap wig on there and not only do you have a prop you might want to use some time, you also have a free model available that you can practice your lighting technique on 24/7, all from the comfort of your own home.

Of course, i’m not saying that you can do everything from home or that taking photos of mannequin heads is a subsitute for the real thing, but thinking a little abstractly can allow you to do things that can benefit your future far more than sitting in depressed, watching daytime tv just because the sky is grey. Think of the skill set you need for your chosen path, then think what other activities use the same or a similar skill set and how you can use that to your advantage. If all else fails, get networking and build up your contact list. Take time out to review your website and think if there’s anything you’d like to change about the way you present yourself. If you really must get out and away from the keyboard, and that’s not always a bad thing, then plan your next shoot and take a drive over to the location to scout it out. There are few things more infuriating than seeing where you’d like to be for a great landscape shot, but knowing you can’t get there before the light drops!

As someone once said, we never waste time, we only waste ourselves. Think of the future you want, then think of a way to help make that future.