The most professional and successful photographers I have worked with during my own twenty-year professional creative career have all shared certain character traits. By developing these traits yourself, you can accelerate the development of your own career as a photographer.
1. The ideal ‘perfect photographer’ must have a powerful work ethic. They accomplish things in a day that ordinary mortals take weeks to accomplish. They seem unstoppable. They know their time is precious, indeed irreplaceable, and they don’t waste it watching TV or on Yahoo Messenger.
2. The perfect photographer is very easy to get along with, has great social skills, a great sense of humor, and naturally people like working with him.
3. The perfect photographer is genuinely curious, interested and fascinated by their craft and loves innovation and inspiration from any source, beginner or not.
4. The perfect photographer maintains their composure in stressful situations where others are reeling and losing control of the situation and possibly themselves. In this sense, the perfect photographer inspires confidence and conviction because he is unflappable and unfazed by almost nothing.
5. The perfect photographer is always experimenting with new approaches, new tricks, new lenses, new software, etc. In short, they don’t get cynical, bored, lazy or complacent about their skill level and are always excited and eager to discover new and interesting things.
6. The perfect photographer has clarity and knows precisely what they are looking for in the final stage of output, eg, a giant billboard, in the early stages of input, eg, conceptual planning. Small modifications at the beginning of a project can have absolutely massive implications for a later project. The perfect photographer is always aware of this and flexibly adapts, responds and solves problems at every stage, always keeping in mind the optimal subsequent end result.
7. The Perfect Photographer is completely generous and recognizes the critical importance of humbly giving back some of your accumulated wisdom, experience, or even money. They are a giver, not a taker.
8. The perfect photographer knows how to say ‘no’ politely. No matter who the ‘no’ is for, they’re great at doing it in an inclusive and polite way that actually makes the other party respect you more, rather than less.
9. The perfect photographer has integrity and can be trusted no matter what. If the perfect photographer says he will deliver something, he will. If they really can’t because of unforeseen problems, they constantly communicate with the person they have engaged with so that the situation is clear to everyone involved.
10. They are not selfish at all and are motivated by their humble love for the process, the craft, the art, the science, of what they do. They are not interested in fame (but they know how to promote their work to the fullest) or extravagant wealth (but they get paid a fortune), but rather feel like a ‘servant’ to the art of photography, if that’s not too cheesy.
Now, which of these qualities do you have and which do you need to develop (a lot?) more?