3 Top Tips from a Career Photographer and Photojournalist
With the experience in war photography, portraiture, and many other professional jobs behind him, Ahmed Najm is perfectly placed to help you further your photography career. For those new to the photography game or those established in their art form, this advice focuses on fostering that career.
We searched through the history of Metrography, the photography agency Ahmed started some six years ago. We turned to his community organization, the Vim Foundation, to look for the driving forces behind his many business connections. We even turned to the Humans of Kurdistan series to get some useful insights into how these particular picture masterworks.
We collated then curated dozens of works from countless situations and have boiled some of the best photography career advice in the business down to these three top tips. so, listen closely, take notes, and one day you might be the next Najm.
3 Top Tips for a Glowing Photography Career
Here are the three best ways to advance a photography career, exemplified by an internationally acclaimed photographer.
Number 1 - Choose your Passion
The one thing that drives all artists in all art forms is passion. If you don't have it, you won't be able to hold onto any photography job you do for very long. You have to choose the passion behind your photographs before you go out there and hunt them down. You can't get a great shot without great motivation.
For Ahmed, motivation came in the early 2000's when the western world was anxious for photographs documenting Saddam Hussein's downfall. It was re-ignited circa 2012, with the hold ISIS had on Iraq. In both conflicts, photojournalists were needed to write and record the action. Ahmed Najm was driven by a desire to portray the human cost that these conflicts put on his people and transmit that human cost on a world stage.
Number 2 - Diversify
If you can't diversify your product, then you won't last long in this industry. Ahmed started as a war reporter; he quickly expanded his range of photographic series to incorporate the lives of the Kurdistan people, each one a story.
A good photographer might be at home photographing celebrities. But a great photographer immerses themselves in the story. They live it, breathe it, and never 'just' report it. Sometimes, this means being undercover; sometimes, it means turning your knowledge of daylight and exposure to wedding photographs. There should be no end to your ability to work that camera.
Number 3 - Never Give Up
There is a phrase in the arts that the only difference between a successful artist and a failed one is that the former was too stubborn to give up. The key personality trait that separates a successful photographer from a failed one, therefore, is stubbornness. Never give up, even in the face of adversity.
Ahmed's most immense adversity came in June 2014, when his elder brother left to report on a story in a nearby town. ISIS was active in the area, and fighting broke out. To this day, nobody knows where his brother ended up.
Ahmed Najm didn't give up the career that lost him, his brother. It led him to carry on his brother's legacy with the Metrography Agency. He documented his brother's contribution to photojournalism by opening the Kamaran Museum in his hometown, in his honor. And that's something to aspire to, photographer or not.
