Lessons for Photographers From the Career of Movie Director Quentin Tarantino

As one of the most iconic screenwriters and directors of the last three decades, Quentin Tarantino has forged a career as a unique voice in films. Although his medium as a storyteller is moving images, there’s a lot we can learn from his path as photographers looking to find our own creative voice.

I’ve been a fan of the YouTube channel of Tatiana Hopper for some time now, and the video featured here is another in her series that examines how creative people have overcome the challenges and obstacles that they have been forced to confront along their path to forging a successful career in their own creative field. In a previous article here on Fstoppers, I discussed Tatiana’s video about the filmmaker Christopher Nolan, and the lessons that we can draw as photographers from his career. In this new video in the series, Tatiana dives into the career of the filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, with a similar agenda.

As I said in my previous article, whether you are working with still or moving images, there’s a real art to telling a story with pictures. But regardless of whether your creative medium of choice is visual or not, there seems to be a set of core tenets that are an essential starting point for finding your voice in any creative field. In the Christopher Nolan video, Tatiana discussed the importance of breaking rules and bucking established norms in order to create something unique. This theme is reiterated in the Tarantino video, and in examining the career paths of these creative people, we definitely start to see something of a pattern from which we can draw valuable lessons as photographers.

There are other lessons in this video as well about just getting out there and doing it instead of waiting around for the perfect moment to start, about working with what you already have, about channeling the pain and discomfort of hard times into your art, and about knowing yourself and what it is that you want to get out of your photography.