In 2009, during an interview on storytelling, This American Life host and public radio personality Ira Glass delivered an must-hear message to beginners.
This snippet of sage advice for all creatives — photographers included — has been taken out and quoted over and over again. It’s popularly called “The Gap,” and this year 18-year-old Saar Oz of Creavite used it to create the wonderfully inspirational video below:
The truth is, everybody has to start somewhere. And often that somewhere isn’t particularly impressive.
This fact becomes all the more obvious when you join photography communities like 500px and browse through the work of all-stars like Michael Shainblum, Lisa Holloway and Chris Burkard.
But it’s important to remember that they didn’t start by taking photos like the ones you see above. They started where you are; where, as Ira Glass so astutely puts it, “your taste is killer” and “your work has potential” but you’re still stuck in that “gap” between your taste and your skills.
Push through… don’t quit… never stop creating, learning, and doing your damnedest to bridge that gap.
It might take years, but those years will pass whether or not you spend them honing your photographic craft. And if you do spend them getting better, without even realizing it, one day you will have arrived at the other side of that bridge… taking meta pictures of bridges that look like this:
It’s a new year filled with possibilities and, if you’re lucky, a whole lot of challenges and frustration. Hopefully this video helps inspire you to take on your photographic New Year’s Resolutions with gusto.
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