People outside your field or profession rarely understand what you or others in your field do.  They may be able to conceptualize the broad scope of what you do, but they have no idea about the specific details.  More-so, they have no idea how one could specialize.  It is feasible to say that an Architect designs buildings.  But each architect has their specialties, and it’s difficult for someone outside the field to fathom that there are differences between such specialties.  I run into that with Photography as well.  I’m known as a photographer.  I’m known as someone who can take photographs.  But many outside the field won’t truly understand that I can’t just capture everything in a photograph.  I am specialized, and that’s sometimes difficult for people to understand.

The situation came up recently when a friend of mine took his girlfriend to get some new portraits done (she’s in the performing arts).  He’s a painter himself, and so he understands some basic concepts such as composition and so on.  He lamented to me that the photographer he was working with did not impress him and that he was quick to believe that the photos would be mediocre at best.  He described at length the goings-on of the photo shoot and discussed how he was watching the photos pop up on the tethered laptop and that he was disappointed as to the photo quality.  I suspect that he was trying to figure out if he – a beginning photographer – might be able to tap into my wisdom to see about getting him closer to being able to take portraits.  The short answer is no, I wouldn’t be able to help him improve his own skills in the timeframes at hand.  But that’s not really my point here.

Photography, as you know, is more about clicking the shutter and I expressed to him that he really had to wait and see what the proofs would look like, despite what he saw on the laptop.  I haven’t seen any of the photos yet myself, and I was not really in a position to make judgement on the skills of this photographer based on my friend’s statements alone.  Yes, it sounded like the photographer was less than impressive.  But I have to be careful about what I say about another photographer.  For starters, I’m only hearing one side of the story.  But I also don’t know what this photographer’s process may be.  His post-processing may help to create that “Wow” factor that my friend was looking for.  It would really be unfair of me to make a comment based on the story alone.

To that end, I did manage to browse the photographer’s website and portfolio.  The man specializes in event photography and photojournalism – the latter of which is most impressive.  Even his portraits seemed pretty good quality.  And while I have relationship with the photographer at all, I still have to walk the line somewhere between my friend and the photographer.  Why?  Because I can hurt myself as well.  One has to keep in mind that my friend values my opinion, otherwise he wouldn’t have come to me.  To that end, rarely would someone ask someone else’s opinion if they weren’t at least a little open minded.  They may be looking for confirmation of their own feelings, but they are prepared to be corrected to the contrary.  And so I encouraged my friend to wait and see what the proofs looked like.

As a full disclosure, please realize that while I can hold my own as a portrait photographer, it is not my specialty.  I am still learning much about artificial lighting – a staple in portrait photography – and so I am not really in a position to shoot a portrait myself, especially not for someone with a career in the performing arts.  And so I have not offered my services in any manner.  But if my friend is not happy with the proofs when they come back, I would be in a position to help him communicate his ideas to that photographer, or I would be in a position to recommend someone else.  But again, I would need to take the diplomatic approach because one never knows when this photographer and I might cross paths again.