Declarations and Qualifications

One of the things I’ve often wondered about is how one gets to earn titles. Not the typical ones like “doctor” or “judge” or whatever. I guess maybe it’s labels. Like “artist” or “photographer” or even “programmer.” One simple and obvious answer is: school. When you have a piece of paper from a university saying you’re an art major, I guess you are officially an artist.

But what if you never practice it?

What if I study computer science but don’t write one line of code; am I still a programmer?

Ok, so maybe school, alone, is not the decider. Let’s choose the second most commonly accepted method: making money with it. So if I am making money as a photographer, then am I officially a photographer? Which, of course, brings me to my next question:

How much money?

How much money do I need to make before I qualify as a photographer? Do I have to make a living doing it? What if the amount of money I need to make a living is way higher than you? Is there a particular monetary value that makes the label earned? Or is it about having a certain number of clients? People who pay me to do shoots. If I have more than 20 clients, am I legit?

What about external validation. What if I have an award? What if I had a gallery show? What if there was an article in a major newspaper that mentioned me as an artist? If I talked at a conference. Where’s the special line where I go from being an amateur to earning the label?

I see a lot of signs on Pinterest (or elsewhere) that say “just because you have a camera doesn’t make you a photographer.” Ok, I’ll bite: what does?

Who gets to decide if I am a photographer?

Artist, writer, programmer, trader. It doesn’t matter what the title is, what I want to know is who decides if I earned it? If I self-publish a book, does that count? Am I still a writer?

I’ve learned over time that people’s lines in the sand vary drastically. Some people will not call you a writer unless a major publishing house has put out one of your books while others call you a writer if you’ve written 100 words for the book sitting on your computer.

Who’s right?

That’s the thing. I think no one is more right than anyone else. No one besides me has the right to make declarations on what my qualifications are for a title. If I decide I am a photographer, no one else gets to take that away from me.

Because, you know what: there’s always someone more accomplished than you. If you claim to be a photographer, I can ask you if you’ve published work that looks like Ansel Adams and say that unless you’ve sold thousands of copies of a book published by a notable company, you don’t qualify to call yourself a photographer. Can you dare say I am wrong? As long as the other person gets to make the decision on what “qualifications” you need to earn, they can always move the bar.

You might be setting the bar too high yourself. For example, back when I wrote novels, I used to think that unless Random House published one of my books, it didn’t count. That’s a ridiculous bar. But still, at least it’s my bar. No one else is telling me what I need to do, who I need to be, to call myself whatever title I want.

I think that’s why those signs irritate me so much. It makes it sound like the other person gets to decide what I am. “Who made you the judge” is what I often say out loud when I see them. To me, they are all about making the other person feel small. If I call myself a photographer, does that make you less of one? Only small people think that way. There’s enough room in the world for each of us to call ourselves whatever we want.

So, here’s what I think: if you want to call yourself a photographer. Go for it! Artist. Go for it. Musician. Go for it. No one gets to tell you that you are not.

You are whatever you say you are.