How to Become a Photographer
Step by step, from stealing your first camera to producing a work of art.
I’m sitting here trying to write about photography in a dimly lit cafe that wreaks of greasy food and burnt coffee. It’s hard to think creatively in such an uninspiring place. I take off my reading glasses, close my eyes and rub my temples. A memory draws me back in time a few years. The cafe noises fade into the cries of gulls. Salty ocean air overtakes me. I can practically feel the cold spray of the waves crashing into the shore.
I’ll never forget this moment. My two-year-old daughter is putting pebbles in her mouth, savouring the salty taste. Meanwhile, my four-year-old son is cuddling with my wife. He’s hungry but saltwater rocks don’t sit well with him. A younger me, let’s call him Younger Mat, is wandering up the shoreline with his camera. Not all who wander are lost. But he is.
For the past few years, he’s been pursuing photography and he imagines to be a true photographer, he needs to take beautiful photos far from home. So he crammed his family in their little car and hit the open road toward the East Coast of Canada.
Naomi was skeptical about travelling such a long way with two toddlers and no real plan, but he sold the trip as their first family adventure.
It’s taken him two weeks of travel to find the kind of landscape he was hoping to photograph all along - jagged cliffs along the rugged ocean shoreline. Before hitting the road, he envisioned the stunning portfolio of photos he’d bring home. But now, at the end of their trip, he’s desperate to bring home just one good shot.
To get that shot, he needs to keep Naomi and the kids happy for a few hours until sunset. But as he walks the shoreline, he looks back toward the cliffs and his shoulders slump. Even though it’s still a few hours until sunset, the sun has already sunk below the cliffs. There won’t be good light for the photo. Ever the optimist, he hopes for a pretty sky in an hour or so. Since the rock formations are in shadow, he could snap a silhouette of them with a dramatic sky as the backdrop.
He keeps walking, leaving the mass of tourists behind. He knows that most people don't explore far enough, missing out on unexpected surprises just ahead. A short distance away, he sees a park ranger roping off the shoreline.
“What’s going on?” he asks the ranger.
“The tide’s coming in. This whole place will be underwater in a few minutes.”
I chuckle at Young Mat's baffled expression. He finally discovers a captivating patch of nature to photograph, only to be told the area is closing for the day!
He strolls back toward the safe zone where Naomi is patiently waiting with our hungry, overtired toddlers. He’s afraid of pushing them to another breaking point just for the sake of a photo.
The ranger ropes off another section, confining Young Mat and his tourist friends to a small scrap of shoreline.
Even if the light was good, it’s impossible to get a nice shot with so many tourists huddled in one place.
A defeated thought runs through his mind.
“I can't believe I dragged my family across the country for this. I just want to be a photographer and I'm lucky if there’s one good shot from two weeks on the road.”
The tourists begin clearing out, strolling toward the steps that will take them up the cliffs and away from the incoming tide. Just as Mat starts to smile, the mass stops moving and gathers around something. He throws his head back and sighs. “Just leave,” he says through gritted teeth.
My laughter gives me away.
Younger Mat glares at me. “What is so funny?”
“I know what those tourists are looking at and it’s going to ruin the last moments of your trip!”
Laughing and heading toward the steps, I leave him behind to see what everyone’s looking at.
Just before returning to the cafe, I look down at him on the little patch of shore.
Before setting out on the trip, he saw himself driving along the coast, photographing sunrises and sunsets from the cliffs. He wanted something simple; a beautiful portfolio of images from his adventures on the East Coast. Then he’d be a real photographer.
So he stands there weighed down by gear, obsessed with getting this one last shot. It doesn't matter the cost and it doesn’t seem to matter that it’ll only be the backside of terribly lit tourists.
Instead of a beautiful portfolio, he’ll go home with camera cards filled with desperate attempts. It’ll take him seven long years to find what he’s looking for in this moment.
I want to climb back down the steps and tell him what he should have done. But I need him to struggle because, without those years of struggle, I wouldn’t have anything to tell him. So, I climb back up the steps without giving him a hint of how it all turns out.
The drive-thru speaker crackles to life and the diner's voices grow louder.
I jump back in my seat.
“Sorry, sir!”
The soothing ocean spray I’d felt was just somebody’s cold soup splashing across my table. Now my notes are soaked and I’ve lost my train of thought. How am I supposed to write in such a place?
I mumble the mantra I’ve adopted, “Your problems aren’t happening to you, they’re happening for you.”
Honestly, writing in such a place isn’t hard with thirty years of good content to draw from.
I refused to tell Younger Mat what he should do in the moment and how things turn out for him because I needed him to struggle forward. By taking so many wrong turns and hitting so many obstacles, he figured out how to make it work - no matter what.
But what I kept hidden from Younger Mat, I’ll gladly share with you.
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This is part of a serial called, How to Become a Photographer, covering everything from camera settings and road trips to running a photography business out of a diaper bag.
One thing I have learned over the decades I have spent teaching myself to be a photographer: sure, it’s great to travel far from home and see dramatic scenes and exotic subjects. But especially during the early months of the pandemic, I learned how to *see* something new even in the same places I experience every day. Hiking the same trails and visiting the same woods time and time again, I ended up making images that resonate with me more deeply than most of the work I made since I first picked up a camera at age 18.