The Right Words From The Right Person At The Right Time
Photographers can be delicate souls.
This one is, anyway.
It doesn’t take much to unsettle us. Self-doubt enters through the slightest of cracks in our confidence, and then feasts heartily on our belief, reducing it to mush.
We’re a bit like actors. We need affirmation and adoration. We push our heads back, raise the back of a hand to our foreheads and whine: “Tell me darling, I can take it, how was I?”
If the answer falls even the tiniest hint short of absolute adulation, our spirits crumble and we lock ourselves in our dressing rooms.
I set off for this year’s IPPA conference in comparatively low spirits. Artistically, I haven’t been able to get it going this year, so I thought. My work has been dismissed during the preliminary judgings for the national awards, and my entry utterly failed in the FEP awards. Worse still, I felt that I was struggling to hit form during assignments.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, nobody seemed to be able to get me to see sense.
Not Anne, my wife, who is usually very good at telling me to stop being such a wet stick of celery.
Not Peter, a close friend and insightful photographer, whose powerful logic was blunted by my artistic self-pity.
Not my wonderful clients who sent me a string of enthusiastic emails expressing their delight at their photographs.
Not the supportive crowd of photographers, creatives and friends who reach out to me through social media.
No-bo-dy.
Nobody, that is, except Vinnie O’Byrne.
Vinnie is one of the great photographers working today.
He is also one of the great photographic mentors.
He terrified me the first time that I met him. He has an intensity and an aura that I found utterly intimidating at my IPPA induction several years ago. There was absolutely no way I was ever going to be able to pull myself together enough to have a coherent conversation with him. This man is a photographer to the gods. I operate on the level of mere mortals. Surely he could barely hear me speak from down here.
It didn’t take long for me to learn that while Vinnie is a giant of our industry, he is a very approachable one. Not only does he hear you, he engages. His passion for nurturing and encouraging new photographers is legendary. He transforms potential into being. He will fight hard for photographers he believes in – very hard indeed. We are blessed to have him in our association.
Since that first meeting at IPPA HQ, Vinnie has become very important to me – as he has to many of us who have joined the IPPA in the past five years.
Last Sunday, he worked his magic again in a short one-on-one mentoring session during the IPPA conference.
I sat down into the chair next to him burdened with doubts.
When I stood up again, the doubts stayed in the chair.
He didn’t actually say that much. A giant doesn’t need to.
Thank you, Vinnie.
