Blog #178 You Know You’re a Photographer When…
Reader Rating
📷 Amateur
You’re a light chaser. You draw with light. You love gear and cameras. you love nailing the shot! You are up early in the morning to catch the sun rise and out late at night to catch the stars.
Your GAS is kicking in and you want that 100MB sensor for no reason whatsoever but it’s cool as hell. “Take my money!” you yell at the YouTube reviewer. You might be a certified photographer, or maybe just certifiable. Not sure? Read on…
In this 178th blog entry, I offer you my TOP 10 list for those of you not entirely sure if you are, indeed, a photographer. I should preface this blog entry by sharing that if you’ve actually read all 177 previous blogs, you are definitely a photographer and I’d love to hear some comments from you about this or any other blog posts.
1. You know you’re a photographer when you request window seats on airplanes so that you can snap away above the clouds.
2. You literally “wear a camera”. You get dressed in the morning, strap on your boots, camera around the neck, and head out into the world. You feel naked without a camera.
3. On those rare occasions when you don’t have a camera around your neck, you take pictures by squinting your eyes and making shutter release noises, trying to burn the image into your brain (possibly the best shots I’ve seen have been like this).
4. You gaze upon a beautiful landscape while on holiday or a hike. Instead of simply enjoying the scenery, you hold up your hands to frame and crop the scene and you immediately decide what colour the matte should be when you frame this imaginary image.
5. You have way too many bags and backpacks for the same purpose. Your closet is full of camera bags of various sizes, shapes, and colours. Some are for rain, some are for hiking, some are for hiking in the rain. Some are for travel, some are for planes, and some are for commercial work. Still, there’s this awesome bag that you want for the next holiday or your birthday. You can never have too many cool camera bags.
6. You have a folder of apps on your phone titled “Photography”.
7. Under your bathroom sink, you have chemicals, measuring cups, and a plastic box full of film developing equipment.
8. You own a dry box to store your vintage cameras so that the light meters don’t get corroded from the humidity (the fact that you know about this issue is enough to qualify you as a photography nerd of the highest degree).
9. You have multiple hard drives, SD cards, and multiple boxes of printed images tucked away in your home and you’re running dangerously low on storage space for all of your camera gear.
10. You become visibly irritated and offended when you see tourists and newbies walking around with their lens hood in the backwards “stow” position while shooting.
*****
Score Board:
*****
0-3 You’re one roll of 35mm film away from being a photographer. Stick with it! You’ll get there soon enough.
5-6 You probably bring a camera to work and social events. You are a social photographer and love you share your work. You give it away for free because you understand that giving is a little bit better than receiving. Welcome to the Tribe!
7-10 You are there! You’ve been offered money for your images. You coach others, you are a model artist in your community and you friends and family admire your work. People have asked you what camera they should buy. You think your work sucks but all good artist think this. You probably have memorised development times for Kodak Tri-X. You spend way too much money on gear but you don’t care. You NEED your gear. Congratulations! You’re a photographer.
The light is always right.
JHG
*Images: © Limelight Limited
Where: Hong Kong
Subject: Banksy Hong Kong
Gear: iPhone 11 Pro
National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year 2017 Editor’s Favorite: Galleries: Week 4 Cities & People
Comments