Passion. Talent. Hard work. The Camera you carry around.

In the last few weeks I have been working on marketing resources and digesting that sort of information. Among all of the crap I dredged up, and believe me there was a lot of it. I found some gems and ideas worth considering. During that time the thought of passion, talent and hard work began to run through my head. It seems to me that these three factors are intertwined. I once read a comment about professional photographers that went something like this:

"What is the difference in a professional photographer and an amateur photographer? The professional photographer only shows you his/her best work"

So lets take those three factors and consider them each separately. I will start with passion:

Dictionary.com defines passion this way:
Passion -

1. any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate.
2. strong amorous feeling or desire; love; ardor.
3. strong sexual desire; lust.
   
4. an instance or experience of strong love or sexual desire.
5. a person toward whom one feels strong love or sexual desire.
6. a strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for anything: a passion for music.
7. the object of such a fondness or desire: Accuracy became a passion with him.
8. an outburst of strong emotion or feeling: He suddenly broke into a passion of bitter words.
9. violent anger.
10. the state of being acted upon or affected by something external, esp. something alien to one's nature or one's customary behavior (contrasted with action ).

Taking their definition I come to the conclusion that for a photographer passion is the driving force behind what we do. It is the feeling or the gusto that makes us get the camera out of the bag and point it at something that may or may not want to have its image made.

When I was younger I was a member of the Civil Air Patrol and among the roles I took on in that organization was that of a Ground Team Commander. During that time of my life it was not uncommon for our home phone to ring and the voice at the other end say "SAR Shack in one hour." I'd jump out of bed, grab my uniform and power out the door. With a mutter apology to my parents as I blew by them in the dead of the night. I would hit the ground running and my team would quickly organize and deploy somewhere in the state to look for a downed or missing aircraft. Now that sounds exciting but you have to keep in mind we never received a pay check, we did it because we loved it, we did it because people counted on us. We did it because it was a passion for us.

Your photography should be the same way, it should never be just about the money, it should be about making the image, about creating something visually new and exciting.

Dictionary.com defines talent this way:

Talent -

1. a special natural ability or aptitude: a talent for drawing.
2. a capacity for achievement or success; ability: young men of talent.
3. a talented person: The cast includes many of the theater's major talents.
4. a group of persons with special ability: an exhibition of watercolors by the local talent.
5. Movies and Television. professional actors collectively, esp. star performers.
6. a power of mind or body considered as given to a person for use and improvement: so called from the parable in Matt. 25:14â€"30.
7. any of various ancient units of weight, as a unit of Palestine and Syria equal to 3000 shekels, or a unit of Greece equal to 6000 drachmas.
8. any of various ancient Hebrew or Attic monetary units equal in value to that of a talent weight of gold, silver, or other metal.
9. Obsolete. inclination or disposition.

An ability you are born with, an ability to do something others can not or to do it better than others can. Now I have a problem with this definition, and my problem is in the word natural. I believe a lot of things but I find it hard to believe that someone is predisposed to be good at something from birth. People are a collection of the experiences that are their life and yes some folks got it lucky and have some great experience growing up and that helps them with their talent. However I also believe that someone can teach themselves how to do something and can become great at it.

Lastly is hard work. Lets face it hard work is just plain old hard. However nothing I ever did that means something significant to me was easy. In 1988 after many years of hard work I earned my Eagle Scout award. One of two that my troop produced. It was a lot of hard work and something that I largely took for granted as I was doing the work. Today though I look back on that accomplishment through fresh eyes, those of my step-son M. He has joined Cub Scouts and has openly told me he wants to earn his Eagle. As S and I help him down that road to the goal I began to internalize all the steps it took for me to reach that goal. At the time I was doing it it was just one more thing that needed done and their were lots of mini rewards along the way. All of which were enjoyable. Today however when M looks at a picture of me in my uniform as a scout he sees all the things he will earn and do and I see all that it took to get there I see all the hard work.

Don't think that your favorite artists just became famous over night he/she worked a long time to make it to that point in their career. let me give you some good examples from the photography world to look at. Moose Peterson, Scot Kelby, David Ziser, Joe McNally, and Dave Hobby. If you are a photographer you probably know these names or at least a few of them. Do you think they became as good as they are over night or do you think they worked their butts off to get the skills that they use to make those stunning images.

I'm not going to research them for you, I will leave that to you but I will tell you that all of the names I listed will be more than happy to share their knowledge with you and all of them do so on a regular basis through their blogs, webcasts and events.

Now where does that leave us in our discussion of these three elements and your camera. I think Jim wan summed it up well in this quote from a recent article. "If hard work is the engine of success and talent is the driver, then the fuel has to be passion." - - Jim Wang Success Finds Hard Work, Talent & Passion

You need all of these three elements to succeed, you need passion to fuel you, talent to make something out of it and hard work to make it all go somewhere. Now where you go and how fast you go is up to you. Just pick a direction, set your goals and keep right on. Make sure you look up from time to time to make sure you are on target.

Best of Luck and until next time keep the shutter click'n!

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