The Online Photographer

A: Making enough money that my kids can eat and have a roof over their head. Without that everything else is meaningless. Once that's done...

B: 1-3 good photos a year and 1-3 new images for a portfolio each month. That means a few images I moderately like a month.

C: Learning something new at least every month and preferably every week.

For me, happy amateur that I am, "success" means capturing with my camera what I saw in my mind and then transferring that image onto a piece of paper. It's out of my hands at that point and up to the viewer(s) to take over from there...

Please tell me the one or two you can't show us are NOT nude selfies, Mr. iPhone.

[They are not(!). --Mike]

When I shot regularly I shot to communicate an idea. My primary success came from when I was satisfied with executing my vision to my satisfaction. My ultimate success came from seeing what my mentor described as my photograph taking on a life of its own. Generally, what he meant by that was seeing my photograph being reused for others own purposes, especially years down the road. I've had this happen with about a dozen and a half photos over the past 5 years. For me, that's a very satisfying form of success.

I hope I'm not pilloried for this, but money seems to be a remarkably accurate designator of success -- money spent as well as money earned. Mother Teresa was never personally rich, but she raised and spent gobs of money; more conventionally, people who are really good artists usually are successful financially. Of course, large amounts of money are also made by charlatans, but they are usually pretty good charlatans, rather than the run-of-the-mill con men you see in so many movies. Generally, though, when I encounter a starving artist, I've observed that his/her art isn't very good (sometimes, I think it just isn't good *yet.*) One of the more frequent tragedies you see in the art world are people who are earnest, hard-working, untalented and old, who feel that they simply were never discovered or who explain that they were "unwilling" to do whatever awful capitalist thing they thought they were required to do to get success. And the bystanders generally agree that he's really not very good...

So I think money is one criteria for anyone who wants or needs money. And I have to say I've met few photographers like Vivian Maier who seem satisfied to work for themselves, and their own private goals. Most want recognition, and recognition is often most sincerely expressed through...money.

A nude selfie of mIke is a picture of him without his beard...

I've just started reading Sam Harris's "Waking Up" and it's not at all what I had expected. It has made me want to restart meditation which I've tried on and off over many years and which actually led me to Ladakh in 1985.

Success is a me word. It's about ego, desire, and ultimately envy. You long for it, but once achieved it loses its power.

I don't think making money is succeeding at photography but succeeding at business. Nothing wrong with that and the two aren't mutually exclusive. For me though, to succeed at photography means I can consistently produce photographs that "work" and that myself and others would value enough to have a physical print on the wall or in a book etc.

My "success" rate varies greatly depending upon many variables including how much I travel, my commitments outside of photography, whether I am turning my creativity to other pursuits (of which there are a few) and how much motivation I have at any given time. Unlike many I don't carry a camera with me at all times and don't regret the very, very occasional missed opportunity as my photography is usually more intentional. If I travel or have a project on I would guess an average anywhere from 30 to 50 successful images a year. In between those times it's more like 10 to 20. I am quite critical of my own work, so one person's success is another's meh.

Right at the moment, it's a feeling in my gut when I get my pictures from the camera. It doesn't always last with repeated viewing but when it does, that seems to be success.
Anthony

I love the second one (the dogs legs)

Frankly, success to me is: 1) five/six printable shots a year and 2) acceptable quality of the photographs I intended them to be of acceptable quality.

Money? It is that we amateurs lose in spades, ain't it?

When you go to bed at night and you think, I'm a little bit happier than I was last night at this time.

I always mentally separated Pay work from Art work.

Professionally I was never wildly successful but paid my bills and was happy.

Ah, but the art. I felt success was 12 or so superior images a year and enough (never quantified)good ones to keep me engaged and striving enjoying photography while provided excellent memories. -b

Success is finding a new project that I really enjoy working on....coming up with an idea that will keep me busy and lead to
new work which leads to meeting new people which in turn leads to new adventures. I am lucky to have my photos in a couple of galleries and the support of family and friends who enjoy seeing what I do. Money is NOT a requirement for my success...but it is rewarding to have an audience enjoy and purchase my work. Years ago when I was shooting for a publishing firm it is hard to describe the thrill of first seeing an entire travel calendar on display at Borders (I'm dating myself) with my name on the cover...that was success back then but now it is different....my photography today is driven more by an internal need to tell a story...to illustrate an idea...to make a contribution to a community. Finding a project that lets me do all these things is my definition of "success".

Agreed Mike!

I don't even care if anyone likes what I'm doing...success in the general sense is the ability to fund a living doing what you want, working with people you're simpatico with; with very few worries about income, so you can concentrate on your core discipline, and use your spare time to be with friends and family.

I am so far from it now, I look in the mirror every morning and just shake my head. Wrong state, wrong city, wrong company, miles away from my family and friends, all to keep my head above water...

...what's that "...quiet desperation..." phrase again?

My response is much the same as yours, Mike, but it does leave me feeling that I should do something further with the few that I like a lot.

Success? There are many different successes. The first one is getting out with a camera. Seeing things I've not noticed before. Getting a good shot of that. Trying something different and it worked. Making progress with a new focal length. Learning something new in Lightroom or Photoshop. Printing. Pulling a print from last month out of the drawer and still being pleased with it. As you can see, I'm maybe too easily pleased.

Photographically? Well, once I get over my frustration that most of my images suck .... it's when I find I have one that I can work into a print that I like and like to have hanging up.

Apart from that, what both Josh Hawkins and Len Kowitz said (above) works for me.

People have often told me that they see the world differently after discovering my work—that now they find “Kingstons” everywhere they go.

This is very satisfying; it’s when I get reactions like these that I know I’m on the right track.

For me, success is making lots of images I'm happy with and the occasional image that makes my heart skip a beat. To a lesser extent, it's also making lots of images that make my friends happy and a few that make their hearts skip, and to a much lesser extent, it's all of that for everyone else.

I have a metric that I use to judge whether I'm doing enough work (three new images posted a week, one or two portfolios started a year) and whether that work has been good enough (one or two portfolios made presentation-worthy or reworked by the end of the year, a dozen or so great images for my end-of-year retrospective, and two or three times that many really good images for my end-of-the-year retrospective), but those metrics aren't really about gauging "success". While I'm certainly disappointed when I don't meet those goals, I don't necessarily feel like I've failed in my work, nor does meeting my goals mean I feel "successful".

In general, I only feel "successful" in the heat of the moment--right after I've taken a picture, or processed it, or printed it--or in hindsight, when I go back and look at something a year or two later, without the pressure of selection and editing, and think, "Wow. That's pretty good," or even "really good". Or "really bad". Though the latter, of course, doesn't make me feel as good as the former.

Success is the feeling of satisfaction when others like your work.

Since I don't do it for money, it's got to be about pleasing myself.

And that means to make 1 or 2 satisfying portfolios of 6 to 20 photos a year (that being the rate at which I seem to be able to do it -- more would be great, but it's not happening) bound into a volume and put on the shelf. Maybe a couple for the walls too.

For me, success is simple. It's finding the ideal life balance that keeps me sane and fulfilled - emotionally, intellectually and artistically.

Sometimes that means working, sometimes it means giving your time, love and attention to something other than work. I find the trick is knowing when you have enough of one, and need more of the other.

It's not always that obvious.

Success. Well lets see....

Since I don't have an "eye" but I like dinking around with old cameras then;

Success is getting my hands on an old ratty folder with a sticky shutter and bringing it back to life.
And then running a roll through it.
And then developing said roll to see if I really did manage to fix it.

And then sticking it on the 'camera shelf' to admire it every once in a while.

Kinda of boring ain't I?

["Honest" is more like it. --Mike]

Success, a description that may or may not apply to what you are attempting to accomplish. In this case photographically when I working in the trade full time was get the image, process and print and on to the next assignment.
As a much older amateur the same criteria apply; with one difference.
The difference is if I don't feel good about the result, nobody will find me out.
For that reason alone, means photography is no longer a means to an end result, for me.

Why do we need to measure everything in terms of success or failure anyway? I enjoy taking photographs. If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't do it. Success (or the lack of it) just isn't relevant.

Success in my photography at various times in my life has meant that I could pay the rent and have dinner.

At other times, and now, it means that I am satisfied that what I produce in my photographs (and books, presentations, etc that center on them) meets my intent, and others find something in the same photographs that they find compelling and comment worthy.

Is it going to buy me immortality in Art? There's no way for me to know, so I don't care about that. For me, the journey is the reward: it's all we have.

G

Probanly the same, but in uneven groupings. When I travel I chase 1-2 a day (wish it was more) and a lot fewer when not on the move.
Writing from a hotel room bed in Osaka and after 7 days her I have 10-15 true keepers (prints) from 1500+ taken.
I find that "back of camera" keepers just are not always print successes.
Same for most others?

Not only is success different for each individual, it's also a moving target.

When I first started learning the craft, I thought success would be being on the cover of National Geographic. I never did that one. Then. it was giving up my day job and being able to live as a photographer. Then it was shooting more than 40 weddings in a year, then 50, then 60. Then the National Geographic thing again (failed again due to it being a complete fantasy and me not trying).

Now it's being in control of my own life and photography has given me that gift. When I want to pick my kids up from school or go to the swimming carnival I do. If the surf is up on a Tuesday, I can take the morning off. When I work, I still work hard but I can process out images at 10pm, if I want to. I still love shooting and do it every day, either for work or play.

Success means that what I am doing now is working well enough that I can take some risks. I'm setting new goals for success by adding UAV's and getting my commercial drone certification to my business, knowing that if it doesn't work out, I'll still be OK.

Gordon

Two measures of success, with a bit of luck they exist in parallel:

First, a client or patron who is happy with the photograph purchased or a completed commission.

Second, and just as important, a personal project photo printed that really works for me. While I'd love to aim for one a month, I'm grounded enough to be happy when it all comes together, no matter the timing.

Success is doing no harm, helping others, and creating images that you feel are important so that you or others can enjoy them by sharing. Money is an idea.
great photographs are more than an idea and they make a difference.
My life is better and richer because of great photographs because they teach me to see and think better.

Irrelevant.