You know when there's a huge gap between jobs? Like you've been hanging around forever for the next work to come in?

No?

Great! Good ain't it?

The past few years have been manic and I put this down to the breadth of the work we do.

My very first boss, Frank, back in the 1980's said to this daft little 16 year old, NEVER specialise. EVER.

That is, specialise in photography, all photography. Be an expert in THAT field. And you know what, he was spot on then and he's spot on now.

Now as a professional photographer, the professional bit most don't realise means that you make a living at it, the worse thing you can do is love one genre of photography. Think of it like this: if you are a Liverpool FC fanatic (other teams are available) and you live and breath it, if you are employed by them to take photos at every game, you'll be way too busy cheering them on to get any work done, marking you a very poor photographer (a shitographer if you will) BUT a real good fan, which is not going to pay anyone's bills.

I remember a story of the famous (infamous) Newspaper Editor, Derek Jamieson who once deriding his photographers for 'helping' Hillsborough survivors rather than taking photos of the tragedy. I may have misted the details of the story a little but the principle is illustrated. His photographers were clearly pro-life and empaths, but what Mr Jamieson needed was a heartless animal. For the record, I am an empath, but as a pro, I'd have taken the photos, and, no doubt cried about the deaths afterwards.

I have one such a job - an 8 year old's funeral. It was all in the press, terrible story, a tragedy. The little lad was hit by a delivery van on the high street. Now I'd just completed a wedding a few weeks before and the bride was high up in a funeral directors and ask me if I'd be interested in covering this upsetting job (no not the wedding). 

The reason was that the press would be there looking for a certain type of story, but I was there to cover the celebration of the young lads life. A completely different photographic story.

Upshot was that I switched the emotion off during the rain soaked walk ahead of the procession, in the church and at the cemetery. Replacing what I wished to be, a gibbering wreck to the professional photographer I am.

Driving back, I remember, I began to shake and I didn't sleep for two weeks.

The other part of not specialising is that you become a better photographer. There are say, 15 different types of photography - sports, portraits, food, commercial etc. All have very different rules, so if you decide to avoid photographing football, you'll miss out on those rules. And don't counter that argument with 'well I'm never going to be photographing sport', because what happens when you are at a wedding and the kids start running around? Sport and you won't have the answer, that's what'll happen. The Shitographer reappears. 

I once did a presentation where we discussed how many genres of photography you'll find at the average wedding. The answer was 7 - Portraits, headshots, performance (dancing), events, sports, architectural, commercial (people handling), 

Lastly, if you don't learn everything the photographic world offers you and you are say a headshot photographer, I can guarantee that the client will say, 'while you're here, could you take a photo of the front of the building?' You'll say no I don't do architectural work and they'll say 'well next time I'll get someone who does both.'

By specialising, you have cut your chance to earn a living by 1 in 15 AND you have let people into your world so as they can steal what you've worked for for so long.

Do you really want to do that?

Jon

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