I’ve been seeing the word agency a lot lately.
I haven’t used that word in a while, but it was introduced to me by a teacher I was studying and practicing photography with.
It was when we were talking about the business of photography, and they made a distinction between agencies that represented photographers and
photographers who represented themselves (photographers acting as their own agents).
But having agency over our work isn’t just related to professional photographers.
Whether we consider ourselves amateurs or professionals,
having agency over our photography is important if we want to be better photographers.
So, what’s it mean to have agency over our work and why is it important?
Let’s start with defining agency, and we’ll take it from there.
Within the context of this email, here’s how we could define agency:
Our ability or capacity to make our own choices, act independently, and influence our own lives or environments.
In other words, instead of being acted upon, agency is about having power over our own actions and decisions.
It’s easy to see whether we have agency
over our photography studies and practice.
Working in an automatic exposure mode means giving up our agency.
Specifically, we surrender our agency to the camera by allowing the algorithms that’ve been dumped into it (the camera) to create the photograph instead of us making the picture.
So, what’s possible and required to have agency
over our photography?
Skill
We can develop skill, and skill beats out talent every time.
Talent is overrated because it can
only take us so far.
On the other hand, anyone can acquire skills regardless of their initial talent, and we can continue growing and honing our skills.
The best way to acquire and hone our skills is by making pictures in manual exposure mode, which participants learn during the Introduction to Photography class.
Responsibility
It’s our privilege to take responsibility.
Notice that I said we take responsibility; that’s because responsibility isn’t something given to us; we take it.
When we take responsibility for our photography, our work is better for it.
The Benefit of the Doubt
When we give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, we connect with our photography studies and practice.
By giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt, we choose to trust ourselves, gather more facts before
judging, and learn to be patient with ourselves.
When we negate photographers, including ourselves, because we’re using our phone instead of a more complex camera to make a picture or dismiss a photograph because it doesn’t follow rules of
composition or any other surface judgment, we penalize whatever we’re judging.
These types of exclusions hurt us instead of helping us.
Give Ourselves
Agency
When we recognize and combine the ideas of skill, responsibility, and the benefit of the doubt as one idea and apply it to our photography studies and practice, we give ourselves agency over the outcome and usefulness of our work.
Furthermore, we make a contribution when we give ourselves agency over our photography studies and practice.
We contribute by taking responsibility for our photography.
We take responsibility for our photography by working in manual exposure mode, and if you don’t know how to use your camera and manual exposure mode, you can learn to do
it in the Introduction to Photography class.
This is making a contribution because our unique perspective is what we’re contributing.
The more unique perspectives the world sees through photography, the more open-minded it becomes.
And if having a part in creating a more open-minded world isn’t contributing, I don’t know what is.
If you want to have agency over your photography, the Introduction To Photography classes are starting soon.
If the schedules don’t work for you, we could arrange a series of private lessons covering the same material.
