That age-old saying that carries so much truth says if you’re the “jack of all trades you are the master of none”, but modern creative productions and a huge demand on multi-discipline structures mean that perhaps that age-old saying needs to be re-written.

Traditionally, particularly as photographers, we were told to learn your trade, master your skill and focus on a photographic signature that defines you, and this has stood as strong advice until recent times. But…. times have changed, and are changing on a daily basis. Technology is defining new production methods and new workflows that are forcing us all to develop, learn and execute new skillsets that we never even contemplated until recent times.

Why is this happening? Well I believe,  this is because brands and their budgets have so much production choice, they can dictate not only how much they spend, but also timelines that force their content creators to find a different and more efficient way of working.

So in many ways, it focuses the skills of photographers (or any creative skillset) as suppliers, not only with their photographic creativity but leaves them scrambling to understand and master a whole new set of creative disciplines in order to deliver their product as a much more finalised and multi-creative offering than they ever thought they would have to when they honed their skills through years of training to become a photographer.

There are many reasons that can be listed for why this is happening and becoming the new way to work, from Instagram and iPhone photography opening the box of tricks and filters that photographers used to keep under wraps, to fast-paced technology and the ease of learning new creative methods.

No matter what the reasons are, or even the excuses that we present as to why this changing of the photography processes is happening, it means we have to adapt and be nimble as creatives (first and foremost) in order to stay motivated, and probably the more obvious reason is to be commercially relevant in a viciously competitive environment.

So how do we do this and stay relevant? Well for me it’s quite simple, but not always easy to accept. We have to lose the shackles of what we know as a traditional photography career and become multi-disciplined, multi-tasking and fundamentally we need to become the master of many trades that up until recent times seemed alien to many of us.

I’ve been considered as being a chameleon in the industry. Grabbing hold of new processes and taking risks in order to move to new opportunities if I thought they would help me stay creative and be commercially viable. This manifested itself in my creative journey by being an early explorer of digital photography in the late ’90s, then exploring manipulating images in retouch, adopting CGI techniques in 2006 as a photographic process (when people used to tell me I was nuts), to exploring my new creative obsession with immersive tech, and experimenting with VR imagery and 3D possibilities.

I often ask, why do I punish myself for spending so much time and effort in learning new creative skills, is it fear? is it creativity? is it FOMO? and I think the answer for me is a combination of all three of those questions.

The truth is, however, that as much as I want to learn all these new skills, new tech and new software, there just aren’t enough hours in the day, or more likely enough space left on my tiny hard drive of a brain to absorb and be skilful at all of them, even though I need elements of many creative processes to get to the final goal of whatever project I’m working on.

My way around it is to try to master many of the skills to the best of my ability and surround myself with like-minded creative people who are much better at each skillset than I could ever be, and this works for me and allows me to end up with my creative ideas and vision is realised.

Jack of all trades, or master of many? Well for me I think it is essential as modern-day creative that we master as many disciplines as we need to build our creative process, but know enough about the ones we can’t master in order to express our vision to the people who do. This will ultimately help us breathe creatively and commercially, but it needs a different modern way of thinking and problem solving, and it definitely needs us to be the master of many.

Written by Carl Lyttle – Founder @Domeble