Why Do You Think You’re a Good Photographer?

Why do you think that you're a good photographer?

The other day I was having a conversation with someone about photography, artists and the concept of talent when they asked me this question:

“Why do you think you’re good?”

Why does anyone think that they’re a good photographer? Let’s face it, being good is very subjective and for every photographers who is truly good at their craft, there are photographers who simply don’t succeed at making compelling pictures. Going one step further, there are some photographers who have real talent and a very creative eye who simply don’t think that their work is very good at all, and by the same token, there are photographers who think that there work is great, when in actuality, it’s boring, cluttered and uninspiring. Fortunately, there is a graph that measures this sort of thing.

So what is “good” anyway?

With photography, as with any type of artistic craft, such as music or painting, I would say that being good indicates the capacity to consistently make work that inspires and evokes a strong emotional response from your viewers. Those photographers who we consider to be good usually have strong technical skills, thorough working knowledge of their equipment, and an original sense of creativity. They continually add to their body of work with new and interesting photographs that are generally well received by their audience.

If we can agree on that definition, we can easily agree that not everyone is good. Fair enough, now comes the hard part. What is it that makes someone think that they’re good, whether they possess the specific qualities that we just described above or not?

My guess is that it’s a combination of confidence, experience and strong evaluative skills. Confidence allows us to believe in ourselves, which is a basic building block for having the gumption to try anything. Experience allows us to learn from past situations and see what methods have either worked or failed in our historic quest to create good imagery. We use the knowledge that we’ve gained form looking at our past and apply it to our present situation. Strong evaluative skills are a necessary ingredient to making good judgments about our work and how it stands up to comparable work.

Those who lack one or more of these three qualities may not be able to accurately determine the quality of their work or how good they actually are. I feel that I have a strong sense of all three, so thinking about this in terms of my own photography, I can answer the question “Why do you think you’re good? In the following way:

I think that I’m good because I was raised to have a strong sense of self confidence, and so I believe that if I put my mind to it, I do have what it takes to create strong imagery. I also feel that I have the evaluative skills necessary to review past work, study new work, whether by me or by other photographers, and make an honest critique of everything that comes out of my camera. Finally, calling from my experience as a former photo editor and a pro who’s been in the industry for a decade and a half, I feel that I have a strong working knowledge of what good imagery is supposed to look like, and judging by which images have been well received or that have made me money over the years, my experience tells me that a high percentage of my work is good.

Therefore, my own personal combination of confidence, experience and critical evaluative skills tells me that I’m a good photographer. Of course, I could be wrong, because there is a definite subjective quality to these three qualities that I just outlined. And as I mentioned above, photography itself is indeed quite subjective.

So I’ll turn the question to you. Do you think you’re good, and if so, why? Or, if you honestly feel that you still have much to learn about photography, or are struggling with your own creativity and image making, why don’t you think you’re very good?

This has the potential for a very good discussion. I look forward to reading your comments.

In the meantime, here are links to a great three part article on the Luminous Landscape by George Barr about the stages of photographic development. It’s a big read, but certainly worth checking out if you have the time.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

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Dan Bailey is a professional adventure, outdoor and travel photographer based in Anchorage, Alaska. You can follow his own blog at danbaileyphoto.com/blog and see his daily Facebook updates at facebook.com/danbaileyphoto

Tagged as: Artist, creative inspiration, inspiration, Photographer, Photography