Just start.
I started photography about three years ago, and the photo that you see above is one of the very first portraits I ever took. It was not taken on a professional camera like the one have now, instead, it was taken on what I had at the time... an iPhone 6s. We live in a world that craves instant gratification; we expect success at the first try of anything we put our hands to and because of this expected instant success, we quit just because we are not are not instantly successful and obtaining the praises of others like we see others obtaining all day long on social media. I am just as guilty of this mentality as anyone else, but what we fail to realize is that everyone at some point or another was not instantly successful. The key here is that instead of quitting, they kept practicing, and as they practiced, they continually got better until they reached the point that you see them at today. Social media has given us a false sense of reality by making us think that what we see occurred overnight, and so then, when it does not happen for us, we are left thinking we will never be that good, and we just move on to something else that we think might give us the gratification of instant success, but I am here to say that EVERYONE MUST START SOMEWHERE AND WORK THEIR WAY UP.
I saw a post on instagram this week that listed a bunch of different creative avenues, and after listing these creative avenues, it said expect the first one of whichever avenue you choose to be awful. "You can't make your 50th without making your first. So, get it over with, and make it." That got me thinking about my journey and how much I've grown as a photographer, and I got to thinking about so many other areas of my life where I have just quit because I did not obtain instant success or instant results, and it is time to make a change...starting with something as small as writing this blog post. What if instead of quitting because we are not instantly successful, we kept working at it just to see where it might take us?? I often think about what if I quit taking photos just because of one bad photo?? Here is what I have learned, you can never expect instant success, but you can expect progress if you do not let the first time be the last time. So... pick up the camera or whatever avenue you have been wanting to try, and get out there. Just make it. Forget instant success, and aim to achieve progress because progress is what success is made out of.
The only difference between the above photo and the bottom photo is not instant success, but rather, three years worth of progress. It is time to stop aiming for instant success, and start aiming for progress because at the end of the day, progress is the only thing that will get us where we want to be.
