Everyone gets the 15%

If you’re born with a thing you can do and a few things you want to say, put it out there. Turn it into something. Make it a part of something more. Because if you’re born with a gift, and God comes a knockin’, when he asks what you’ve done with it all, you’ve gotta think that saying you just marked it up and milked it for what it was worth isn’t going to cut it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying not to make a living. Just don’t only make a living. It used to be that we aspired to the iceberg and not the tip. Before life could be summed up in hash tags and feeds, it wasn’t about the buzz, going viral, or a tomorrow without a future. It wasn’t about the quick and the dirty. It was about pursuits. About going deep. A belief in better things. It was about destiny.

But this is a get better-faster-in-no-time sort of world. And in this world, where you post your favorite 50, you tweet your favorite one, and you share every job you’re on just to let the world know you’re there – in this world, where you are always living large, loving life, and swimming in waters of success, even when you’re not – who the hell cares about the rest of the iceberg? If the tip does the job and gets you work, the rest of the iceberg is for suckers. We all have places to go and people to see, don’t we?

So we can give ourselves a pat on the back for jobs well done, we can puff out our chests and know we matter. But it’s farce of the highest order, because the reality is just getting it done doesn’t matter. Good enough is not good enough. Everyone gets the 15%.

Blame it on Facebook. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve logged in just to see if I got the likes. It’s pathetic. But I can’t stop myself. Blame it on the Web. Blame it on social media. Blame it on whatever you want. But all of our names float the circles. Google yourself. See all those shiny 5-star results. On the Internet, you get to exist with a capital E. And it feels good. Like a junkie on a drip. But the problem is everyone else gets the same. In this manicured existence, we all get to be special for doing nothing more than anyone. Think about it. Let’s say you grab a bite to eat. The service is mediocre. You still give a tip. They still get 15%. That doesn’t mean your waiter did something more than anyone else. It means they got the mean. The norm. They were typical. And typical sucks. Don’t fall for it. When you let accolades and acclaim corrupt your sense of self, you lose sight of true north. Keep your compass inside. If the iceberg is for suckers, I want to be a sucker every day.

We all have a gift. A thing we can do, a few words to say. Yeah, the days are hard and the nights are long, and your body takes a pounding. You bust your ass. No one said mediocrity demanded little. But that’s just doing the job, and doing the job is not enough. Not even close. What you have is worth more. Because if you can even imagine answering to that higher power, whatever that higher power may be, whether it’s your god, community, or legacy alone, then you know that making some coin isn’t an answer enough. It’s about more than a dollar value. More than a look. We cannot be summed up in a procession of bokeh, beauty, and bridal bliss.

Weddings are a microcosm of everything good in this world. Not in a Hallmark sort of bullshit way. But for real. A wedding is people, community, and love. It’s a beautiful mess of everything we thought we needed mixed with everything we didn’t know we had with a dash of everyone who cares thrown in for effect. It is a potent thing we play with.

In every second of every moment, there are things that matter. Not just for your business, not just for the ego, but for the simple fact that these things happen, and we are there to see it. And we get to be there for that and let it live on. Photography must go beyond formula. Formula codifies life, robbing it of the universe’s energy. What we do is a storied tradition with a long lineage. It is, as the Tate Museum says, the most important art form of the 20th century. And the power we decide to give it is up to us and us alone. Not the industry. Not the money. Not the trend. Not the blogs. Us, as people who are part of a day, and, quite literally making something of it. Forget the rest.

You’ve been trusted and charged with a rare responsibility. Because you are going to decide what the wedding means. Your pictures, your inclusions, your omissions, your decisions will create the very memories of that day. No one else has this power in the way you do.

Some pictures will be about you, some about them, and some about the sale. Everything will be about something. What something is the something you want to say?

Because you’re going to have to decide. Is it about the details or the moment? Is it the style or the depth? What are you going to be all about? Do you want to be about more negative space, more abstraction, more fearlessness, more sweetness, more sexiness, more flash to the side, more composition, and better equipment? Or do you want to take go take some pictures?

Good photography is more than the photograph. It’s the reason it’s taken. Without that reason, the image has no legs to stand on. Without the reason, the image won’t exist. And that’s the rub. Because that means being a sucker is hard. Really hard. A slow burn most of us never signed on for. Being good doesn’t mean it’s the best of everything we’ve ever seen. It means it’s something none of us have ever seen. It’s being bold enough to say what no one else is willing to say. It’s being strong enough to see what no one else is seeing. You must be willing to strip yourself bare, draped only in the power of your own beliefs, and let the world see you for who you are. You can use any technique you want to get there. But you have to make it yours.

If you want to live life, do it or die trying. That’s the only way you’ll get to make the call. That’s how you get to own your life. Not Style Me Pretty, not The Knot. Not a planner, caterer, or designer. You are yours when you pick the world you want to live in and nobody else.

Now maybe you say it’s all a pipe dream. And maybe it is. No doubt, this notion flies in the face of reality, and we all know reality is never going to back down. Maybe you say you can have it all. You can do it all. You can get the detail and the love. You can get the composition and the soul. Maybe you can. Maybe you can’t.

But in asking for more and asking for better, know that the question isn’t whether you can do it. And it’s not whether you can make it. Plenty have made it and stopped dead in their tracks never to be heard from again. The question is whether you’ll go the distance. Because that’s all that really matters in the end. And if a pipe dream is a carrot in front of a stick that keeps us on the move, looking for more, then so be it. When you look back at the end of it all, there’s really only one person you’ll have to answer to. Yourself. And if you never gave up, and you always kept pushing with the power of belief behind the message you spread and the gift you shared, then you can hold your head high when you ask yourself what it was all for. Because you’ll know you lived life. And life is a hell of a ride if you’re willing to get on.