In some ways, photography is to visual artists what piano is to musicians. I can get you to play a somewhat accurate rendition of Mary Had a Little Lamb in about 2 minutes, and if it isn’t in tune, that’s the piano’s fault, not yours. Similarly, if you have a camera, you can create an image in about two seconds, and if the image quality sucks, it’s probably the camera’s fault, not yours. But have you ever tried playing a bowed instrument? I did, for over a year. I doubt I ever actually played a note in tune, and my tone quality bordered on unlistenable. Drawing is similarly difficult; my first two years of drawings are generally not good.

When I was in high school, I attended a magnet school for the arts, which meant that around 70% of the students had auditioned for competitive admission to a specialized program in theatre, visual arts, dance, music, or creative writing. This meant that there were often two versions of each art course: there was the version of the course intended for (and restricted to) the students studying in that discipline, and there was the general version, intended for everyone.

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how I dress lately, which I think is something that happens to you when you’re in your early twenties and trying to figure out how to be a “professional”. I think dress codes were always sort of a sticking point for many people, but from what I understand, in the pre-covid era there were many workplaces with very strong implicit or explicit dress codes that (I am told) made it very easy, or at the very least, easier to understand how you were supposed to dress.

I was chatting with one of my friends yesterday, just to check in, when our conversation moved from small talk to the topic of being artists on Instagram. We’re both pretty unknown on Instagram, and I suspect she’s just as unsure as I am about how much of an audience she actually wants for her work, but the discussion was still mostly about how “well” we were doing. And as of right now, she’s doing much, much better than I am, despite the fact that I have had my account for about two and a half years longer than she has. To be fair, she is a much better artist than I am, which totally accounts for some of her success. However, not all of it can be attributed to that. At all.