When starting out as an artist or photographer it is easy to be intimidated by other’s who have come before. You look at their body of work and think how could they have created all of those amazing photographs or artwork.
The problem is you are looking at the culmination of a life time of work. A body of work takes a long time. It’s a process that worked on day by day over a long number of years.
As a photographer, my body of work has been the result of over thirty years of looking around at the work around me. And more specifically in the last ten years or so, having a passion to find and create compelling images for the fine art and publishing markets.
A body of work for a photographer takes time to find and cultivate interesting subjects and concepts. It requires researching and travel, post-processing and a bit of luck that can only occur over a long period of time training your eye to be ready for the unexpected opportunities when they present themselves, to create your own luck by putting yourself in fruitful situations and locations and always be creating – always having your camera ready.
You can’t rush a body of work. Although you can work to create an early set of images to represent you in a portfolio. These might be a photo shoot done for the express purpose of showing a client what you can do – but a true body of work will develop over a long career. Better work will replace the earlier attempts. The best will survive and rise to the top.
In the end your body of work will a culmination of “lucky” happenstance and well thought out and controlled results.
The Chevy Bel Air at the beach is one of those images of mine that was controlled luck. I was shooting the sunset on a Florida beach when I spotted this beauty on the way back to the car. I couldn’t have planned it better, so I quickly got a few shots in.
You can kind of tell the unimaginative bodies of work from weekend warrior type photographers from working artist. They’ll have shots from the same old same locations – Antelope Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, Eiffel Tower. I’ve always thought the more interesting and compelling portfolios are from photographers who shoot in between these obvious and over done iconic “Kodak Moment” spots. Photographers who have a passion for showing off their vision of the world rather than just pulling out their camera for the annual National Park vacation and standing next to a bus load of tourists all snapping away at the same thing.
Make your own unique contribution to the visual world of photography. Sure, shoot the iconic locations but to create a unique body of work, show us what we haven’t seen so many times before.
