Hello.
When I was 19 years old,
I hosted my first-ever photography workshop.
I've been shooting for around two years prior to that.
I was very nervous, and I decided to put an advert out
on a wonderful place which is the Internet.
I am sure we all very familiar with the Internet,
and what a horrible, dark, mean place it can be at times.
So I placed my advert out,
and within about two days I've had about 20 responses from people.
Some people saying, "I can't wait to come,"
"I'd love to meet you,"
"I can't wait to hear what you have to say."
One email which stood out more than the rest of them by far
and it sticks with me to this day.
And it read:
"What on earth makes you think you're qualified to teach a workshop?"
And I thought to myself, I don't know.
I don't know what makes me qualified. I don't have a degree.
I don't have many years behind me as a photographer.
I shot in auto mode at the time.
So I went to the workshop, and I told people:
"Shoot in auto mode if it makes you comfortable,
because if you are comfortable, you'll be able to do good shots.
If you are uncomfortable, and you are scared,
you are only going to make things harder for yourself."
And it worried me and it worried me in the days leading up to the workshop,
and I convinced myself that I wasn't going to do a good job,
and I convinced myself that I was going to be a failure.
It wasn't the best workshop that I've ever done,
but I learned so much from it.
And that's what leads me to today standing in front of you guys;
I still have no degree, I have a small amount of experience behind me.
But really, I have no idea what I am talking about.
And all I know is that if you can be creative,
and you can work hard, and you can take a passion
and turn it into something that you love, you can forge a career out of it.
And I'd like to call that 'winging it,' and that's what I am going to do today.
Next.
This is a portrait that I took. It's photoshopped.
A lot of my things are.
But this, for me, it's called "You are not alone".
A lot of the time in my photography
I felt alone.
What I am going to talk about today is ideas, conceptual, pictures, how to edit.
I am going to talk about thinking of the ideas and what to do
when you have no idea what to do with your life.
So first of all
- Oh, this comes up very small -
does education equal ability?
When I was in sixth form, definitely not at King's School,
we are not rivals
(Laughter)
I sat in my sixth form and I doodled.
And I've got told off by every single one of my teachers
who said to me: "Rosie, pay attention!"
"Rosie, listen, you are not going to learn or get a job."
"Art does not pay the bills." That one was my mom.
And when I decided that I was going to become a photographer,
and I was going not to have a 9 to 5 life,
I felt like I was taking a step,
but it wasn't a step towards my hopes and dreams,
I felt like I was taking a step towards failure without even doing anything.
I was worried that I wasn't going to have enough money,
I was worried that people weren't going to like me,
I was worried that there was someone better than me already.
What can I bring?
What can an 18 year old girl bring to an industry
who hasn't done anything with her life yet?
What do I know?
The countless other people have already figured out and told everyone.
So, university isn't necessary.
As I said before, I have no degree, I have no qualifications.
I actually got predicted a D in my art A level,
which I though was quite amusing
as my art teacher while she was giving me a bit fat D,
I was actually grading other people's course work
who used me as their artist inspiration,
and which was quite a big compliment at the time.
Stepping towards failure that's how I felt.
And when you are in a creative industry,
and when you are taking it upon yourself to do your own work
and do your own thing, that is a scary, scary thought.
We live in a society where qualifications are more important than being happy.
When I was doing my A levels,
I developed alopecia due to the stress of the workload.
And I am sure many of you sitting here also feel that stress when you work.
I was so worried that I was going to fail my exams,
and I was so worried that I wasn't going to make
anything of my life and that I would be miserable.
So what I decided to do was
I decided that, no, my happiness, my hair growing back
are more important than my philosophy A level, and I dropped it.
Become experienced.
Experience is so underrated.
The best thing you can do with your life is try it.
The people who don't get jobs these days
after they've gone and slogged out for years in university,
are the people who are not getting hired because they don't have experience.
Everyone needs experience so that's what I decided to do.
When I was 18, and I finished A levels, instead of going to university
- I applied, but I never went -
I went to America and I decided I am going to learn, to do my best,
I am going to probably mess up.
I'll have people telling me that I am wrong, that I cannot do it.
Someone emailed me 2 weeks ago telling me I had no idea what I was talking about,
and I sometimes agree with them.
But I decided that's the way I would try and live my life,
and that brings us here to today.
So what do you guys strive for in life?
This is a picture of me [floating] on some books.
Most people agree that we all strive to be happy.
Most people agree that we all strive to be rich, successful, wealthy,
some people strive to be famous, each to their own.
But there are so many sources
that we think we can take our happiness from.
Being thinner will make me happy. Being taller will make me happy.
Knowing what I am doing will make me happy.
And although these things might help, they don't completely get you that.
People make the assumption that because I have a fun job
and because I get to go and meet these people
that I must be happy.
Because Maroon 5 have hired me to do an album cover,
I must be rich, therefore I must be happy.
I can tell you that one of my camera - my camera and one of my lenses -
cost the same amount as they paid me for that album cover put together.
So it's not necessarily
the things that you think that will make you happy that do.
This is the album cover I did for Maroon 5.
And people say to me: "Wow, you got the best job in the world."
"You got to go and hang backstage with Adam Levine."
He was top list, it was fantastic, and it did make me very happy.
This is someone with the tattoo of my face on their arm.
This is very strange and very surreal,
but it did not really make me feel like I had any worth more
because this person did this.
It was cool, yes, but there are so many things
that people don't talk about when they are in their jobs.
They don't talk about their amazing careers
and they don't put it on Facebook how actually you can cry at night
because someone said you are not good enough.
And how hard it is to take that passion and turn that into a career
when your passion is all you have in life.
What happens when all of a sudden that passion has to pay your rent,
and if you don't do what others say, you are not getting paid?
Here is Lucy Mecklenburgh from The Only Way is Essex.
And Craig Colton from The X Factor.
The Craig Colton picture was shot in Akapa where I used to live.
I am a big believer in doing things on the cheap,
and I am a big believer in making use of your resources.
And with Craig, I decided
that he was going to go down to people who were walking past,
and I was going to chuck leaves at him and see what happens.
And that's how I am creative: I decided to try things
that are a little bit weird, and just hope they turn out for the best.
It's a lot of practice and a lot of of trial and error.
I've also been very lucky
in order to go around the world and shoot wedding workshops in Paris.
This is two of the pictures that I took.
We also got told off for shooting on the tram lines they made
- about six announcements, and we didn't hear any of them.
OK, next step: a cold bucket of reality.
This is the reality that I am talking about
when you turn your career into your job.
Essentially what you are doing when you love something
whether it's music, dance, photography, or acting,
you are taking what makes you feel alive and you are caging it.
It's like you are taking a bird and caging that bird and saying:
"Right guys, form a line,
you can pay to see how beautiful this bird is up-close."
That's what I did with my photography, and it crippled me for a while
because all of a sudden,
it was the client's vision versus my vision.
It wasn't me skipping from school anymore
to take the pictures that I love and roll around in the dirt.
It was the client saying: "Look, I need a picture of this ice cream."
And I had to make it not look like ice cream,
and how do you do that?
How?
What I did was I decided to make my client work my personal work.
That was the only way I could get around it.
And even now, there are some clients that still aren't that interested,
and I am just someone who clicks a button.
But when I do get clients that say, "You do what you want,"
that is the best thing in my life.
"What would you do if money were no object?"
This is a quote from Alan Watts who has greatly inspired me.
And he says: "What do you desire? What makes you itch?
Figure out what you love, do that, and then forget the money.
Because if your life is all about money, you are left in a very empty shell,
and money takes away the passion,
and it makes the hobby the chore and the job,
and there is nothing worse
than getting up in the morning and thinking, "I don't want to do this."
This is the picture which is called "The superhero in me is tired".
And when I took this picture,
I had felt like I had tried so hard to jump, and be courageous,
and leap, and try a career where I have no backup plan.
And I felt like I had fallen,
and I had felt like I had hit the ground and face planted quite hard.
I am not ashamed to admit to you all
that I've cried many times about being not good enough.
I've hated the pictures that I have taken.
I've wondered whether I am in the right career.
I've though, wow 9 to 5 sounds amazing, I could just clock off.
But at the end of the day, I feel so lucky to be doing a job
which means that I can express myself,
and it means that I can take all those negative feelings
that I experienced in the cold reality that got dumped on my head,
and I can actually channel that into a picture
and I can channel that into something that people can look at and say,
"I get that.","I felt like that."
"I am going through that right now
and I needed to see this picture in order to pick me up."
Getting out of the hole.
So many creative jobs, if you ever try a creative job, you'll be in that hole.
And the first step to getting out of the hole is wanting to get out of it,
because it sucks you in.
And you'll find that the people that succeed in life are actually
the people that got out,
because so many people don't get out of the hole, so many people stay in there.
and the only way that you can get out is to try.
So you have to realize that happiness comes first.
You can't constantly put your goals ahead of your happiness,
because if you do that, you'll never going to be achieving them.
You've got a grade B, now you'll have to get a grade A.
It works the same way with every single job.
You have to let yourself be happy before you can achieve the goals.
Don't forget to look at your hands.
One day when I was typing client emails, I looked down at my hands
and I was thinking to myself, I hate the fact I have to do this all the time.
It sucks the fun out of everything.
And then I realized how beautifully
the light was hitting my hands on the keyboard.
And I realized that my hands are never going to be this young again.
This is the youngest my hands will ever be,
and I am so lucky to have this.
And I took a mental picture, and I started to climb out the hole.
I am going to skip this one because we don't have much time left.
This is me having fun.
This is one of the pictures that I did when I was taking self-portraits,
and it's called "I will not sink".
I decided that I was going to go to into a lake and force myself not to sink
because I love photography.
And as the next slide - after this one I'll show you -
every great artist was once an amateur, and we all have to start somewhere.
Pablo Picasso was probably rubbish at painting when he first started.
My first 2,000 pictures were absolutely horrendous,
and I over textured them.
But I love them, and I learned a new skill each time.
Creativity is the ability to feel the negativity.
It's the ability to be put in the situation which you find hard,
and it's the ability to channel it,
and to channel it into something that can make you greater.
Losing yourself is OK.
Because the reality
of the cold bucket of water that got dumped on your head
is the very reality which made you love escaping in creativity in the first place.
When I was sat in my classroom at King's School, half asleep,
doodling in my 'Classics of' lessons,
I wanted to get out, I wanted to do my own thing.
And so, at the end of January,
in my sad tax, my sad receipt pile
- for my tax bill which is due and I am very nervous about that -
I am in the same situation.
I am in the same situation when the client says to me:
"That's not good enough, we need you to do that again. You've failed."
And that's the reality that forces you to escape back
into the thing that got you there in the first place.
So, what I hope for my career
is that I can keep going and keep creating pictures.
I never give up.
My name is Rosie Hardy, I am 23 years old, and I think I am happy.
Thank you.
(Applause)