Yesterday, I did something that is not typical of my normal behavior. I vented, publicly, on Facebook. If you know me, you know that I have my little trust tree, and that a close group of girls climb up into it bring me a cocktail, a snack, and they let me air out. And when I’m done, we are laughing, I feel better, and we all climb on down to the ground (I swear we can still watch our kids from up there!). I don’t see the internet as a place to vent about clients, vendors, or other photographers. And yesterday I let that slip. After deleting my posts, I thought long and hard about the takeaway. How could I use it to push me to be better? Had I been the offender? What could I both learn and teach from it?
I am going to omit the specifics of my situation, because rather than point a finger, I am going to try to swipe broadly and hope that there are positive takeaways from this. As always, there will be people who will vehemently disagree with me. All I can do is repeat what I have in the past: if it bothers you, please make sure that you ask yourself “WHY?” before you reply. Because typically when I find myself either taken aback, or feeling insulted, or completely opposed, I realize it’s because the person has struck something at my core, that either I’ve been trying to resolve… or trying to hide. And so whether or not I planned it, this type of feedback, criticism, or enlightenment ends up being a growing experience for me.
The issue at hand is originality, authenticity, and downright plagiarism.
Please understand, this is not a new issue, nor is it one that has happened on a recurring basis to me as it has to some of my truly amazing and talented colleagues. That said, one of the most publicized portrait photography copy-cat instances — the Groupon Photographer — copied my “About Me” section from my old blog. Overall, I feel like a lot of my work is fairly straightforward and classic, and so is it easy to copy and did I perhaps copy from others? You bet… I can’t really claim that I invented “OK, everyone look at the camera and smile.”
There are so many aspects to this, and it is a source of endless, and exhausting discussions, so let’s tackle the easiest piece first: plagiarism. In the Groupon case, she copied and pasted my About Me wording, and used it on her site (along with most of Jodie Otte’s images). If I recall, there were about 10 words added in, and about 10 words taken out, so had I entered it exactly (with quotations) into my browser, or copyscape, an identical match would not have appeared. However, my statement was something to the effect that I was locked in my office, drinking coffee and them finding me was like finding a set of lost keys. I wrote that because at the time, I was working at IBM, I literally NEVER left my office, and when I emerged, my friends were so excited — like they never expected to see me again, and what I surprise, there I was just like lost keys! Her About Me statement had the elements “Locked in my office, coffee and lost keys.” Now every other photographer seems to mention coffee (or wine) in their About Me section, so does it make it unique (no) or generic (yes)? But coupled with the other elements, even while not an exact word match, made it too similar to mine. And when you continued to read, you could see where she’d left out a word, or perhaps spelled out “it is” from my “it’s.”
The point is, I wrote that statement because it was so AUTHENTIC to who I was at that moment — when I remember it now, it immediately takes me back to that exact time in my life. There is just no way that a photographer with a seemingly thriving business, and a studio who wanted to bring in a ton of business via Groupon, could have felt that same exact way. And people knew instantly that it didn’t ring true, and that it wasn’t authentic.
Creating a blog or a website can be daunting — so much text you have to come up with. How do you sound witty, smart, like the chic girl next door who will never make you say cheese and wants to capture the in between moments and “tell your story?” You can buy the content. It’s easy. There is a TON of content out there for purchase. I won’t knock that, I think I bought some when I was starting out. And when you BUY it, you are PAYING for the right to use content that someone else came up with. FAIR & SQUARE. But when you COPY it from someone else, whether they live in the next town over, or across the country, it’s ILLEGAL. And it’s wrong. It’s essentially looking at a fellow photographer and saying “I don’t value you or the industry at all, I have no respect for the time and work that you put into developing this, and I am just going to take it.” Whoever says “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” can go to hell. Exact imitation shows not only a total lack of respect, but it also puts a spotlight on what you have failed to learn to do yourself.
The photography world, particularly lifestyle newborn, children and family photographers, seems to be incredibly inbred. There are about 5 sets of parents (parent = major user forum), and many photographers are birthed from there (I was!). People read blogs and follow websites, and catch on to trends and generally all strive for the next best thing. And so this plagiarism line gets very blurry. If you Google “natural light lifestyle photographer” for your city, chances are that within the first page or two, you will find at least 5 photographers who have an About Me section that states that they picked up a camera after the birth of their first child, they’ll never make you say cheese, and then they will proceed to list things they like. Did they all copy each other? Probably not. It’s a trend. If two people have an almost identical like list and and there are enough words/sentences that are uncannily similar, then I’d bet one “inspired” the other. And one of those people is not being authentic, and the other is probably steaming mad. So should you not follow the trend because you are worried about plagiarizing? No, you can do whatever feels right to you… but come up with it YOURSELF. And if it feels like it’s similar to something you’ve read before, it probably is. Sit on it, mull it over. And at some point during the week or so, you’ll have an ah-ha moment and think “THIS is what I want them to know about me… and it’s SO ME” (not who I want to be, but ME as I am).
Originality and authenticity are tough nuts to crack. No doubt it feels like almost everything has been done before. And when you are just starting out in business, you have superstars, or maybe even just the girl next door, that you blogstalk (or now FB stalk). And so it’s natural that you begin to believe that you want to build a portfolio similar to theirs. You start to almost think you are friends, because you have read them every day, commented, and maybe even received a response back. And when that happens, you begin to think it’s possible. And so you covet their style, you find out what actions they use to process, what lenses they like to shoot with, you might even purchase the same template as them or print at their labs. But you are missing one MAJOR element. YOU AREN’T IN THEIR HEAD, YOU HAVEN’T WALKED A MILE IN THEIR SHOES, AND YOU DON’T SEE THE WORLD THROUGH THEIR EYES. And that’s OK, you see it through yours, and you bring your own experiences to the plate. So rather than try to take on their style, think about how you make it unique. What’s the first thing you see when YOU get to a session location? Is it the same fence post you’ve seen photographed there time and again? Or is it a hydrant? Because yeah, you can shoot the shit out of someone leaning in a particular pose against a split rail, just as you’ve seen, or you can think “that hydrant has awesome fresh paint, I bet I could do a headshot with them sitting there and no one would ever know it was a hydrant!” The point is, you can’t take someone else’s scenario and slot in your subjects. It’s not your vision, it’s theirs. Does that mean you can’t shoot in a public place because someone else shoots their? Hell no! In fact, last year I told Sarah Freel to shoot at the Coolidge Estate for a session (a private location where I had permission to shoot) and she came out with some shots and I thought “Holy cow, I am not sure in my 50+ shoots here that I have EVER captured a kid like that!”
Newborn photography makes it even that much more difficult. There are endless props and endless workshops and in many cases, there just isn’t a whole lot of immediate differentiation between “curl up and sleep on a beanbag.” But there are people that get it right like Amber Scruggs – Little Moon Photography (and many other fabulous photographers who are gracious enough to share in workshops – some only to have it taken advantage of). Amber shoots something crazy like 12-24 newborns a month. And she doesn’t even copy herself. If you know her, she is meticulous about selection her hats, her props, her backdrops, and while she might repeat poses, almost never does she copy her own setups exactly. She challenges herself by assessing what is in HER MIND that day, that she is seeing with HER EYES, and using HER EXPERIENCE of what works and what doesn’t, and then adjusting and adapting that to the UNIQUE NEWBORN that is in her studio. If she can do that for all of her sessions, shouldn’t you (or I) be able to do that for ours, whether we shoot 1 or 15 newborns a month? So is it being unoriginal if you put a baby in a bucket (safely!)? Yes and no. But it is copying if you ask Amber for a list of her fabric and prop vendors and then you buy the same blanket and hat, and put it in the same bucket, and position the baby the same way. And after all that, since it’s not your setup, and it didn’t come from your heart, soul and experience, will the image really be that good?
To this day, I stick with the mode of operation that if I feel like I’ve seen it before, I verify that and do due diligence to make sure that I am not stepping on toes. And if I am, I quickly back off, and spend some time thinking about how I can present my idea in a way that is uniquely me, without ever devaluing the original source. Case in point: I’ve had an idea brewing for a while about people and things I wanted to focus on as a blog side project. I networked with some women, and I got about 50% through baking my idea. And while the term “Mamapreneur” is hardly unique, and many people interview Small Business Owners on their blogs, my idea felt close (not an exact copy, but CLOSE) to what I’d seen on the ever-talented, and amazing stylish and artistic Stephanie Piscatelli from Bellini Portraits. Not feeling right, even though I know the origins of my idea, I emailed Stephanie. Is she one town over? No, but sort of same market, maybe cross over blog readership or FB likes. She described to me the origins and history of her Mamapreneur series and also described how it had been copied before. And while my idea was only close, after working through a few stages (irritation, ah-ha, embarrassment, relief), I realized it would probably be disrespectful of me to move forward how I planned. I back-burnered it. It simmered. I thought about where I was in my life, and how I needed to bring these experiences to light, and I embarked on a project that is now so different, and unique to me, without ever detracting or devaluing anything Stephanie has worked so hard to build. Did it suck for a minute? Yes. Did I feel a bit defensive working through the process (seriously, I am NOT copying your idea, this idea was MINE)? You bet. Am I beyond happy that I gave it time, and now have something that I own all on my own? Absolutely. Do I still drool over almost everything Stephanie produces. God, yes. Is her style mine? No.
There is such an incredible difference between imitation and inspiration. Imitation is replication. Inspiration is being awed, and then putting your own spin on it. There is inspiration EVERYWHERE. It’s YOUR JOB as a photographer, and an artist, and a business person, to figure out how to OWN IT in your own way. Learning this, on your own, is the only way you can build a brand that is AUTHENTIC to you. I can’t repeat it enough, as it was handed down to me by I think Audrey Woulard during a mentoring session, “If your brand isn’t AUTHENTICALLY YOU, it will fall flat and FAIL.” You have to start somewhere, you have to begin learning, and imitation may be part of that process, but until you have figured out how to make what you do authentically yours, you need to take a step back and evaluate where you are in the development of your business and brand. It is SO HARD to survive in this industry. I consider myself successful, however not a month goes by when I don’t want to say “what have I done and can I really sustain this?” It’s that hard and I’ve done all the work. I can’t imagine declaring myself in business and not having tackled this challenge.
Nothing is more true than the cream rising to the top with photographers. So do yourself a favor and don’t take milk from someone else’s cow, but go get your own and figure out how to cream it yourself.
[If you like this article, and want to read more, check out my Learning Resources posts on this blog or on Facebook].
Gorgeous photos. You do such great work Kristina!