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While I’m not a writer, I do think about words and their meanings all the time. I find that many creative (and not so creative) people confuse the meaning of two words: vision and trends. When someone has a vision, they see the future. When something is a trend, it’s already happening in the present.

This is why I think the common perception of trends – hot, successful, young, rebellious, avant-garde – really isn’t visionary because by the time something has become a trend, there’s already a point in which it will pass.

For example, back in 2009, editors were already demanding that we shoot video to accompany our pictorials. While shooting the video was nothing new as we had been making them for years, our usage and marketing and making them part of the final product is common practice now. Does this make us visionaries? Perhaps. However, the point I’m trying to make is that we shot video because it was part of the creative process of what we do and it was a medium easily accessible to us. We didn’t have a vision, we were just doing our job as artistic individuals looking to expand our abilities.

I don’t get frustrated by people who define me by what type of camera I use but I know of many photographers who do. Anyone who knows me also realizes that it’s never been about the tools but instead about the creative process. I might not be a visionary, but I do know by the time something is labeled “trendy” there are many people who are jumping on the bandwagon just to appear . . . well, in not so many words . . . trendy.

To me, being a visionary entails five traits. The first is obvious: taking a risk based on instinct rather than by word of mouth or copying the latest trend. The second is being concerned with the substance of an object or idea, not just the slick wrappers they come in which will help you identify trends for what they are.

The third trait is being afraid of what might go wrong but brave enough to act on your instincts and beliefs. If you’re not a little scared about what you’re doing and its possible outcome, there’s a good chance you’re not doing it right.

Next, is being brave enough to act on your ideas, even though they may not be popular ones, or the majority of people tell you it won’t work; author J.K Rowling was told not by one, but seven agencies that her book about a boy wizard would never amount to anything, Steven Spielberg was rejected from USC’s School of Theater, Film & Television three times, and even Steve Jobs was fired from the very company he created.

The last one is not getting in your own way and seeing yourself as others might. When television first made it big, the radio people who saw themselves in the entertainment business survived. Those who saw themselves as radio people . . . well, we know what happened to them. In another one that hits close to home, just look at Kodak. They were the innovators in the photo industry up until the time they thought they didn’t have to change to suit the new thing called digital photography (even though they basically invented it).

To sum it up, being a visionary takes a strong belief in oneself. It means following a path yet unpaved. We throw the word “visionary” around a lot, but next time you hear it, make sure it’s just not a trend in disguise. It takes nothing to say an idea won’t work and everything to prove it will.

Jarmo Pohjaniemi

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