Some thoughts on Lord Mammon's teachings

[Passchendaele]

Waaaay back in the Good Olde Days (my good old days, not yours) I had returned to school to study commercial photography. There was a fellow there who, right out of the gate, was producing amazing work. Everyone, including instructors, were in awe of this dude.

He did not bring any special knowledge with him when he signed up, he took all the basic courses everyone else took, he wasn't a prodigy, but his work was Professional, from Day One. We really were in awe of him.
At the end of our last semester we had a portfolio show at the Civic Center. We are all there, dressed nice, sober, attentive, while professional photographers and studio owners walked through and (hopefully) would offer us employment or apprenticeships.

There was also a lot of standing around with our hands in our pockets wondering when they would break out the snack trays. I was talking to him, about how everyone was blown away by his work, and if anyone was going to walk out of the Civic Center that night with a solid offer in hand, it was going to be him.

He knew all that stuff, we'd been telling him this from the first semester. I asked him what was different for him, he started like the rest of us, so....how did he make it work so spectacularly?

His answer. “I read the books and did what they told me to do.”

I didn't buy that for a moment. “Come on, what do you REALLY do to make it work?”

That was his entire “secret” He read the same books, which were full of advice from the Pros, and also, detailed instructions on how to reproduce the product shots they had in the books, right down to diagrams of where to place the camera, which lights to use, and where to place them, it was all there.

He was the only student to grasp that (seemingly) obvious fact, and run with it. He looked at the diagrams, reproduced the set-up, not AT ALL a hard thing to do, and looked like a pro in his first semester.

In reading Lord Mammon's lessons, that members have been gracious enough to share, I thought about that classmate. He knew what we all overlooked, that the textbooks were written by pros sharing their years of first hand knowledge and years of experience in the studio, to help us newbies become the best photographers we could be.

If we listened to them, and acted on it. It REALLY was that simple.

Not easy, we still had to invest the sweat equity, but it was that simple.

Lord Mammon's lessons are full of those moments of clarity where it dawns on you, “He's telling the absolute truth. If I listen and act accordingly, I WILL get what I asked him for. Because I earned it, not because he handed it to me.”

It's so direct and true, I suspect that if it were put “out there” for general consumption, most folks would call bullshit on it. “What are you trying to sell? Nothing is that easy.”

That's because they are confusing “simple” with “easy” A common mistake. I make it a bazillion times a year. One day, I'll learn (fingers crossed)

[Passemoon]

This is like the curry chicken recipe story. Same recipe, 2 different cooks cooking it the first time. One produced the curry chicken as it should and the other's was way off. This was the first story that one of the mentors highlighted to me when I first started on my job. A lot of times we don't like to read the instructions word for word and follow them. We feel that we can be better and reinvent the wheel and "up" the teachings so to speak without realising that we may not even be at the proficiency level yet. Sometimes all it really takes in life for things to work is really to just follow the instructions laid out... hence my motto with instructions. I always try to read word for word first without reinventing anything first. It is only when we master the teachings and skills that we can be more explorative. But in the beginning following instructions simply works