A mentor's joy ...

I teach and mentor others in photography, both professionals and devoted amateurs. I love doing it. But there are those moments when it becomes more, when it really becomes a special honor and a privilege. I had the occasion to write a note to a young student today, and thought I'd post it here also.

It starts out written to both the mother and her daughter. The mother has a tremendous voice, an instrument of rare power, beauty, emotion, and altitude. It is a very finely trained voice, quite capable of performing in the non-miked world of the opera stage. She's also quite a pianist, and plays for ballet and dance rehearsals ... which boggles my mind as you often do that while reading orchestral scores ... and the twenty lines of music are in different cleffs and keys ... and she sight-reads them at times! I sing and play several instruments, but this is so beyond me!

The daughter is a dancer and a photographer besides her high-school studies, and she currently lists those activities as her two passions. I've had the joy of reviewing her work this week, and will be doing more over time on the MyPhotoMentor.com website. And so, here is my email to the young lady and her mother:

To the both of you:

Part of my job 'round here is to be encouraging to about anyone. Thankfully, so far everyone here has enough internal eye to be well worth working with anyway. And when, eventually, we get some that don't have such a fine natural eye, I'll still be delighted to help them find their way in choosing and using their best subject matter.

Your daughter is NOT like anybody else, however! Talking directly to the young lady now, you can see better than many pros. You don't have the experience yet to discern the best angles all the time, and your subject placement is occasionally static. You don't even know yet how to trust your inner senses. A good share of the time you won't even hear your best inner senses through all the other gobbledegook going on in your brain. You are just starting, and these impediments are unavoidable for your skill and experience level.

Experience DOES matter, and diligence to your craft. Your ma knows this ever so well in her music, and I know has worked with you on this too. It doesn't make any difference how wonderful you are with a brush, if you don't know how to mix to get the precise shade and sheen of paints you need, you aren't going to make your painting a masterpiece. If you don't have your individual ballet elements drilled to perfection, your dance will not be what it could and therefore SHOULD be.

But some people see and hear things and feel things that others just can't ... not in the same way. It's the native sense of a blues guitarist who just holds his notes that tiniest titch out of rhythm as he slides around the pitch ... that is more interesting than any other "merely" talented guitarist. It is the interesting ideosyncracies of one finely-trained voice that make it more interesting than another, more "perfect" voice.

You can't train for those things ... you train for skills and capability, but the difference between the merely tremendously skilled and the artist is both subtle and vast. And intrinsic to the particular human.

Miriam had that ... difference ... about her, when I started her out in the studio all those years ago. I could see it lurking in the background of her images. She wanted shortcuts and I gave back general instructions here, detailed demands there. Ticked her off royal as I wouldn't give her the shortcuts that she wanted. But it was what she needed to develop the confidence and awareness of her own eye, not just to learn "the proper way to shoot X".

When Cherie's daughter was graduating from college, Miriam went to South Carolina with her for the graduation. Strolling through the streets of Charleston, Cherie couldn't believe Miriam wasn't snapping away at the beautiful and unique homes and flora they passed. Miriam gave her the camera, and Cherie came back with a couple images from the first moments she'd ever held a professional camera that many of my technically wonderful professional peers will never match.

I really ticked her off too, after she returned, when we went out shooting together. She wanted me to tell her where to point the camera for a good shot ... and I blankly refused. Cherie knew I'd done it often for students and friends, and thought me quite mean for withholding my advice. But I will NEVER do that to someone who has such a strong native eye of their own. I would NEVER interfere with such a personal element of their own talent.

And I would NEVER tell you where to point that camera! I'm not saying you should be a professional anymore than I could tell someone they "should" be an opera singer ... but you can't help but be an artist when you work with a camera. It's just there, inside you, waiting to spill out. You need practice, you need guidance, you need failures, you need skills. At times, you just need to be ignored so you will go off and do your own thing. And through it all, you need the encouragement from without and determination from within to become what you can be.

And I am thrilled beyond belief to get a chance to play a role in your development!