thegrabble.com

How do you set yourself apart from your peers? How do you create something relatively unique? How do you take pictures that can’t be replicated? You already know the typical responses to these questions: Practice. Patience. Time. I’m not talking about any of that. If you want a straight answer, there are 2 ways to take one’s photography (or filmmaking) to the next level:

Fancy Equipment

An easy example: With a prime lens with a low f-stop you’re going to have an advantage over the guy with the kit lens when hunting mice in the dark. Take that further. If you have an waterproof shell for your camera, you’re going to produce shots that are impossible for a normal DSLR owner. If you purchase $5000 of aquatic gear, you’ve virtually separated yourself from 90% of all amateur photographers in the world—you can go underwater. Thing is, you need a truckload of cash to implement the “fancy equipment” principle. There’s also no guarantee that you’ll actually be good at using the hardware.

Balls of Steel

Don’t have cash to burn? Don’t worry. Just gird up your loins. Do something so insane that your peers will not be able to replicate it. Jump in front of a charging lion. Or rhinoceros. Or train. I’m kidding—but you get the idea, right? Truth be told sometimes the ballsiest thing you could do is to ask a total stranger if he/she would be your subject. Without taking risks, you will end up collecting photos of your own family, your own friends, predictable scenery and of course—food. You might get to shoot weddings once in a while, but you’re still shooting when “allowed to” or “permitted to.” Nothing against wedding photography—it pays the bills and hones the skills—but very few people pick up visual art with the end-goal of shooting weddings. On a final note, I hope you sense the comedic tone in this post because I’m no Braveheart myself.

I got the picture below from Boston.com/bigpicture, my favorite photojournalism site.

A demonstrator uses a slingshot against security forces during clashes in Bangkok on May 15, 2010. (PEDRO UGARTE/AFP/Getty Images)

“Who thinks they are so important they need to write books about themselves. Who are these people who write about themselves. And how did I become one of them?”—Donald Miller, in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

Here Miller seems to describe my feelings for the previous couple of months. Only ignore that tiny detail about having written a book. I have never written a book in my life. What frustrates me is that awful self-centered voice in which I tend to write. Am I still eight years old keeping a diary? Why can’t I stop using these words:

I

me

am

my

This tendency revealed itself to me, I think, because I am now “officially” an “adult.” Married. Holding down a job. Responsibilities and the like. All good things, mind you. Except now I can’t go around writing openly about every personal pondering. I can’t go around running my mouth about the heinous humans in my life. Because my life is now our life. My actions and words can and will influence my family. To continue writing, I would need a pseudonym. Or, I could begin to write enigmatically:

Poetry!

Fiction!

Both of them tools to enable self-expression while preventing social and professional destruction. I exaggerate but you do get what I mean don’t you? Using these magnificent vehicles of language, like-minded people will “get” it. The merely curious will continue clueless. How convenient.

That’s until I found out I am inept at poetry and narrative.