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I appreciate what is said in the article about talent. As I see it one cannot judge themselves on being talented. As the saying goes, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Being proud of your own work or improvements in your skill still need to be seen and judged. Another famous saying, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" The same applies to a person that never shows their work or never has it critiqued, reviewed or commented on.
It does take hard work to get recognized for one's work or seek out new learning opportunities to better one's skills.
My opinion of photography as an art is that we paint with our eyes. We have full control of what we capture once we focus our sights on something in particular. We have full control of what we do after the image is captured. People say editing a photo in Photoshop is cheating, but is not different than painting an out line of a scene on canvas and going over it with all the fine details of what one is painting. You are being creative and artistic with each modification you do, even if you automate it.
A photographer may only shoot the same type of portraits with a very small selection of props and backgrounds all his life and have people tell him he is talented, why? Because they liked what he produced and can consistently produce the same quality of work that they are expecting.
Talent is ambiguous. It's just like saying, "That image is AMAZING!!" without any other information to back up such a statement. What does "amazing" mean quantitatively and qualitatively to that individual? Does that person's opinion represent that of others? What context was that person putting that "amazing" photo against (other similar photos, all photos, or all forms of images)?
I am critical of my images and like some that others don't and have been told I'm amazing or I suck. It's all subjective and when I ask why I am often given a blank look on their face. Yes, their opinion may be based on their mood at the moment, experiences, or something else, I don't know.
If I can have someone analyze my photo, pick apart all the details, tell me what could be improved and show right away under the same conditions with the same equipment, I will have learned something new. Unfortunately, I had an experience with some pompous, arrogant commercial photographer that said what I was doing was all wrong and I couldn't be taken seriously with the equipment I had and just started hating on me out of no where. I said take my camera, adjust the settings and flash as you wish, I can provide remote triggers or an OE-C3 cord to use and compare it with the same image I just took. I show his friends in the reverse order (his first and mine second and they chose mine), I assume they either couldn't see much difference and was trying to be loyal, they genuinely like mine better or they didn't care and just happened to all pick the same image after the first friend said they liked one. He only really made a minor change to what I was shooting at, so there was next to no difference in lighting, his composition was hardly different that mine, except the subject was dead centre and with more empty space all around (probably he was thinking of all the text he would enter later, lol). To me this meant nothing, but was made me laugh for a moment.
I had another photographer, do the opposite. Again the guy had better equipment, but was very humble and helpful (and this happened a couple weeks later than the last example). We were doing a bit of a tag-team of shooting a group of three from various angles and poses. I was impressed with his creative vision, composition and the way he used his speedlight on his camera. Both of our images were like for different reasons. Mine captured the moment well and was composed nicely, while his looked like fine art images. In this instance, I had a lot to learn and practice.
I look back at my earlier images, and feel I have improved in general. However, I don't feel or call myself talented, good, great or any thing. That's not for me to judge and these days, everyone has a camera. I've seem some images I really like that were taken by someone's phone or point and shoot. I know some people that like to cook and prepare beautiful dishes and photograph them each time and take really good food images (compared to me and most amateurs, IMO).
Just as the author of the linked article wrote about, he has been photographing for decades and was not successful and not recognized as talented. He only improved when he learned from other professionals through school and mentoring rather than books. One thing that makes photography groups like TPMG great is that it does foster such a great range of photographers at different levels and there is so much one can learn from the other. Comparing photos taken from years ago, whether in magazines, ads, etc, the image quality, and creativity shown now has exploded.
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