Worth a Read: So You Want to Be a Fishing Photographer or Writer

by Mark McGlothlin on August 16, 2017

in Inquiring Minds Want to Know

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Admittedly (and unashamedly) this is a little “home cooking”, but Jess has posted something worth a read for those hoping at some point to become a world-famous (or infamous) fly fishing / outdoor journalist – So You Want to Be a Fishing Photographer or Writer…

She has some fairly solid insights from the perspective of one who’s been grinding in the game for the better part of a decade now; she’s covered some interesting stuff stateside during the past while, and spent time in Samoa, French Polynesia, Peru, Alaska, Cuba, and Belize, with trips to Japan (soon) and Sweden in the works.

I’d dare to add two things more to her list of suggestions, though they’re closely related.

One, learn to really think. There’s a stunning volume of fluff published digitally and in hard copy in the fly fishing and outdoor genres; remarkably similar in tone, content, and context, often weaving in fantasy as fact. Digging deeper into a topic (whatever it might be), taking it apart and looking at it from a number of angles, even challenging current dogma or long-standing traditions, actually thinking about it, is damned hard work, uncommonly practiced, and probably not taught at any level to 98% of the population these days (I’m not sure where the 2% are, but I’m trying to be optimistic here).

Two, be a leader, not a follower. The problem with being a thinker is that you’ll begin to realize that the masses are so far behind the true innovators (those guys and gals actually thinking objectively about things and creating, not copying), the leaders are just a speck of dust on the horizon.

Two random corollaries to the leader issue: a) Social media will never teach you to be a leader, actually quite the contrary; and b) the majority is just as often (if not more often) wrong these days as they are right.

[Full disclosure – Jess is my daughter, occasionally contributor to CW, and business associate.]