Here’s a video of a fun talk photographer Joe McNally gave at Google:
He had some great stories from his career as a professional photographer, noting that “a career in photography is an exercise in tenacity”. Certainly, his experiences shutting film, shooting everything from life-size Polaroids to digital, and getting called up by National Geographic on a regular basis bear that out.
Even mistakes and bad steps seem to be taken in stride; as he says, “you have to have fun doing this, this profession is just too difficult if you’re not, and your pictures will reflect that”. That’s something I hadn’t thought about too much - how much mood comes through the camera. I have to admit some of my more emotionally engaging shots have come when everyone was having fun on both sides of the camera.
Of course, that means reaching a level of comfort with your subject, be they family or famous. His advice here was that “you’re always segueing into someone’s life; you have to make them feel comfortable… I do a lot of research”.
Another aspect of his talk I really enjoyed was how general his portfolio was. Even as a “magazine feature photographer”, he’s covered a wide variety of photography. Sometimes I get the sense that to be a successful professional photographer, you have to narrow your specialty and build a brand around it; it’s nice to see proof that people also make it as generalists.
