“I am a firm believer that as you look at good work, it subconsciously influences yourself.” — Dustin Abbott
Tags: Experience, Journey, Photography, Interview, Stories

QUESTION 4/7: Can you remember any moment or moments when you noticed the biggest change/improvement in your photos? What helped you with that?

It wasn’t really a particular moment, but to the one thing that I did that I’ve recommended to a lot of photographers since, and that is to look at a lot of photos, particularly those from people whose work you admire.

I am a firm believer that as you look at good work, it subconsciously influences yourself.

Not that you should become an imitator of someone else. But I think that if you start to understand what works in photography and what doesn’t.

There’s a big difference between what your eye sees and what a camera sees. And there’s obviously huge strengths to what we see visually, but there are also techniques you can use in photography that can produce something that is really visually interesting that your eye cannot do. And it‘s really kind of learning what worked in a photo, both in my own work, but also by looking at the work of people that I admire and seeing that they’ve done, something that’s really, really fantastic.

What can I learn from that? What can I absorb from that? And I would say that, and understanding how photography gear actually works. And on that note, I always encourage people also to actually learn things like aperture and the relationship between that and depth of field and things like that. Because when you start to understand what actually takes place when you take a photograph, it really helps you to be able to visualize how to create or maybe give you the expertise to create what you can visualize in your mind. And so I think those two things really helped me a lot.

QUESTION 5/7: Is there any advice or maybe a tool or technique that worked for you that helped you to track your progress and to keep on going forward in your photography journey?

I mostly came to become a photographer in the age of the Internet age basically. And so all along the way, there is metrics through a lot of basically all the different places you might share your work.

And so while I have tracked those metrics and I think it does give you some feedback as to what works and what doesn’t, I also have learned to kind of value my own inner voice in that.

Because I’ve shared some exceptional photos that weren’t all that critically successful. And then I’ve shared some mediocre photos that were very, very successful. And so at the end of the day, I still know which is which. And so I’m not really moved by that.

I don’t want to do photography based on an algorithm.

I’ve noticed that there are some people who are very successful on photo-sharing sites that basically share variations of the same theme every time.

They just do the same thing over and over again because they’ve determined that it’s popular.

I don’t ever want to do that. I want to do the kind of photography that actually motivates me and not boil this down to some kind of algorithm that says, if I do this and I demonstrate it this way, I’m going to get a lot of critical success for it.

So in a sense, I would say that I value my own opinion more so than what I value the opinion of the crowd. And I think in many ways that’s more of what being an artist is about.

QUESTION 6/7: They say that you can’t grow without being challenged or without challenging yourself. So what is the most challenging part of photography for you? How do you challenge yourself?

One of the things I think I’ve personally, just maybe because of my personality type, is that I had to learn how to properly process criticism and to learn what is actually constructive criticism, things that I can grow from and that which is just someone being small. Out on the internet, people are anonymous and so they say, and they do things there that they wouldn’t necessarily do in person.

And you really do have to learn to kind of parse out what is someone just being a troll as we call them on the Internet and what is actually constructive in terms of criticism. Something that I should have done better. You know, was that horizon actually crooked? And so for me, it’s not becoming wounded by words that are just said by some person that’s either jealous or just being abusive.

Be also open to growing a more thick skin. And I’ve had to do that more and more as I’ve become increasingly a public figure and I have just access to a lot more people who can criticize me.

You do have to develop thicker skin, but also I don’t ever want to get to a place where you’re kind of entitled or arrogant to where you think that you’re above criticism because a lot of what I’ve learned along the way, either on gear or in photography has come from being challenged, doing research and either reinforcing my position and articulating it better or recognizing that I got something wrong and that I needed to grow from that.

That’s my takeaway. I think it’s about how to properly handle criticism and to actually use it to become better.

QUESTION 7/7: If you could turn back time and restart your journey, what would you do differently? Think of it as advice from yourself now to your younger self.

I would say that the biggest thing that I would say for myself and I would say to others is that I would be quicker to sever ties or several relationships with either companies or individuals that I didn’t actually enjoy working with.

When you started off you’re really hungry. You’re really desperate for every opportunity that comes your way. And so as a result, in some of the early years, I persisted in relationships that made me miserable. I felt like people were kind of taking advantage of me or they were poor communicators. And so I would be frustrated because I would follow up on something they had asked for and then I’d hear nothing from them.

And it was really liberating when I recognize one day, you know what? I can walk away from this relationship. I don’t have to be in this relationship and got over that fear that if I wasn’t in these either poor or abusive really relationships that I could have no success.

And so I think if I could go back, I would prioritize doing business with and interacting with people that I actually enjoy.

And I’m really thankful there’s tons of people in the photography industry all around the world that I really, really enjoy doing business with. People that I have great relationships with, that I enjoy communicating with, that I learn from and grow with.

And I’m very thankful that I’m not doing business with anybody at the moment that I don’t enjoy doing business with them. And I think that if I could go back and redo it, I would make that my policy faster.