'Showing Up' is the First Step! | Aug 2016
My Personal Photography Journey August 2016 Part 1.
I’ve published some other blogs and such detailing my photography journey from the very beginning until now. I’ve done so, as I’ve gone through my photography archive, reviewing and in some cases re-editing select images to share. Though some portions of my earlier journey can be found on my Medium account, much of what I’ve written is not online at this time. Perhaps in the future, I will backtrack further and recap my earliest adventures and the start of my photography journey. But for now, I will pick up from where I left off in August 2016.
In August 2016, I was testing out different things. I was having fun experimenting while exploring at all different times of day or night. I contacted a local photographer in Seoul to inquire about tagging along and helping out. Through that experience, I was hoping to learn as much as I could, and at the same time hopefully earn a little money on the side. At this point, I was hoping to take my passion for photography from a hobby to earning a living. Sadly, it didn’t pan out the way I was hoping. Nevertheless, I learned something interesting from those experiences and it did put a bit of cash in my pocket.
I had a lot to learn in terms of my photography, in curating images that would be sent to the customer, and in editing. I think, mainly for those reasons it didn’t work out with the photographer. I was strung along a bit, with no concrete decisions on the part of the photographer as respects me coming on and learning/working with him. That was a little bit of a letdown, but I understand that until that point he had worked by himself and that this would be a new experience to have others join his brand. He certainly had to weigh his choice very carefully, but it would have helped me if he had been more upfront about his plan.
He did mention to me if I had joined him, that he would send off my images to be edited, instead of having me edit them on my own. (Yes, as mentioned, I had trouble with editing well.) He also seemed disappointed at one shoot that I did on my own, mentioning that ‘[He] would never send an unsharp image to a client.’ Again, issues with my curating the images. I took very few photos out and almost sent the entire batch of images except for blazingly obvious misfires or eyes-closed images.
On the plus side, he mentioned that he had quite a few photographers reach out to him to come along and learn with him or to help him out as a second shooter. But out of ALL the photographers that reached out to him, I was the only one that SHOWED UP!
He told me he found out very quickly how interested in the prospect of being a photographer. He would hear from someone wanting to work with him, he would reach out to them with a day/time/location of the photoshoot that he set up but would be met with excuses left and right. After so many times, he would assume they weren’t that serious. When it came to me, he would reach out, I made the appointment a priority, showed up early, and stayed for the entirety of the photo shoot, helping and photographing. After the 3rd or 4th time showing up, he told me about the others and how he could see that I was serious about working as a photographer.
Lesson learned!
Show Up! That’s the first goal.
The photographs might not be perfect just yet, but show up and learn!
Although things didn’t turn out exactly how I would have liked at the time, I did enjoy the experience and learned a lot from it.