When you start out in photography you don't really think about paths, you just think hey you take pretty photos and that's it. Well that was the case for me at least. In my last post I spoke on how I started my photography program but didn't explain further on that. When you start the program the first question they tend to ask is "what kind of photography do you want to do?" I get the teachers may feel like some students have done research or experienced something photography related before this course but I find that the students
who haven't really often find this question pressuring. It's the same feeling of being asked what do you want to be when you grow up to like a 5 year old. There's nothing bad about asking that question but when I did get asked this first semester I felt super unprepared and like as if I was supposed to know what I wanted, especially since some people knew these different types of photography and I had no idea what anything meant. It's intimidating honestly.
One of the first commercial assignments I did first year first semester (2020)
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Semester after semester I felt myself still not knowing, I reached my second last semester not knowing. I felt so uncreative and unpassionate about photography that I didn't know if I was actually meant for this or not. How could people be so creative and know what they wanted to do and I couldn't ? That lingering question as well became a bigger deal as time passed. " What are you going to do after ?" Do you really think I knew ? I didn't even know
what my photography strengths were / didn't feel anything for photography. I only reached this point because I constantly compared myself with other photographers in my program who most likely had years of experience before this program all thanks to Instagram. It was until probably last year 2nd last semester is when I started to feel something. What changed? I had a group of friends in the program who inspired me a lot and kept me happy.
From right to left : Me, Sabrina, Kevin, Jack
When last semester came around and we had the ability to be more in studio we embraced that opportunity more than anything given a great majority of our course was online and we never really got the opportunity to experience the photography course to it's greatest potential. All these projects I've created recently has been thanks to their encouragement and support. Given that we are all focused on our portfolios and given so much creative freedom this semester it's like our creative ideas just poured out. All we ever did was constantly message each other ideas and times to work on our shoots and it just came out beautifully. In the end I realized, I may not be great at photography but I do have a love for editing and creating something that may not seem noticeable to non editors and then
revealing what I did just to get that reaction out of them not believing I created what I did.
I think the one photo I edited that really made me feel proud to get a reaction from was the beverage photography shot called Vampire Cocktail. That image was actually the most stressful assignment since I was going all out for it but the main issue I had with it was I was scared to handle dry ice / I didn't want to buy so much dry ice. So during the post production in a desperate attempt I searched up on google "how to make smoke on photoshop" but It was more so showing me smoke or fog videos . Eventually I ended up finding dry ice brushes by chance and they ended up working beautifully, but obviously since I was the editor I wasn't too sure if it looked realistic so I often asked people for their thoughts and most of the time people couldn't tell. So I'd say that project turned out fairly well. Commercial photography will always be a tough one for me but I love the challenge.
I got fairly off track with point for this blog but the main point was to keep in mind that everyone's goals and motivations are very different. You may not know what your purpose is right away , maybe even for the entire course. But when you do find out never stop working at making the next big thing happen for that thing you're so passionate about it doesn't have to be photography but if it is, don't be scared about if your work is not as good as others because trust me everyone's visions and skill level is so different. Never doubt your work because at the end of the day you actually posses talent, just being able to take a photo, understand how to work photo studio equipment , photoshop everything. That's talent not many people know how to do that so never doubt your abilities cause remember you're always learning something new everyday. You don't need to have a set path from day one. You'll find your path at your own pace.
-Marcela