508. Turning His Obsessions into Professions

“I did really well at school—if you don’t count learning! I had a terrible time in school and had to repeat my final year. So, I took myself out of the system and took myself to the State Library, where I began my lifelong commitment to self-educating. I knew that I wanted to be a photojournalist, so I got every book on photography that I could. I pored over the pages, and I looked at all the grainy black and white photos. I read between the lines and it taught me a couple of things. One was that if I wanted to be a photojournalist I’d have to have a camera in my hand at all times. The other was that I had to go where the action was, and it wasn’t happening in my hometown of Brisbane, Australia!”

“I got out of the army after three years and started to hunt for any photography jobs I could find. I ended up printing photos in photo labs. But then an opportunity came up to do a training internship with ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. ABC focuses more on documentaries, which is what I wanted. I got into a ‘trainingship’ for three years and, Bang!, I was doing what I wanted to do. They essentially gave me money in one hand and a plane ticket in the other, and said, ‘Go and document people’s stories.’” And he did. For 25 year.

“If opportunity comes, just grab it! So many successful people are just ordinary people who are willing to do things that other people are not ready to do.  We let so many opportunities pass because we do not think we are qualified for it, or for many other reasons. If you do not grab it, someone much less qualified than you will grab it!”

1. Learn everything you can about the interests that drive you. There are plenty of resources out there, many of them free.

2. Just keep going, and if there’s something you don’t know, find someone who can tell you.

3. When opportunity comes, grab it!