The Thing About Being a Hired Creative Nobody Says Out Loud
Here's the thing about being a hired creative that nobody really says out loud. A lot of the images I make for clients, I feel almost nothing when I look at them.
Not because they're bad. They're good. The client is happy, the agency is happy, the images do exactly what they're supposed to do. But by the time I get there, I'm executing a vision someone else spent months, sometimes years, building. A mood board they already fell in love with before I ever got the call.
You're hired for your eye, sure. You're also hired to compromise it. There's give and take on every job, and most of the time I land somewhere pretty far from what I'd have made if it were just me and the subject.
That isn't a complaint. It's the job. And what I love most about being on set isn't the final frame anyway. It's the calibration. Getting a room full of creatives moving in the same direction, making something out of nothing. That's the part that lights me up.
But it's also exactly why personal work and testing aren't optional for me. If all I ever do is execute other people's visions, I lose track of my own. The work I make for nobody, on my own time, no mood board, no sign-off, is what keeps my voice mine.
If you're a working creative who feels disconnected from your own portfolio, that isn't a sign something is wrong with you. It might just mean you haven't made anything for yourself in a while. Go make something nobody has to approve. That's the whole point.