I just got accepted into Fearless Photographers.
If you're not in the wedding world, that probably doesn't mean much to you. Let me explain.
Fearless is a global community of documentary wedding photographers. To be accepted, you submit a portfolio and a panel of working photographers — people whose entire careers are built on this — vote on whether the work is good enough to belong. There's no application fee that buys you in. There's no membership tier you climb to. You either make it or you don't.
I made it.
And I've been sitting with that for the last few days, trying to figure out why it hit me harder than I expected.
I think it's because I've spent a lot of years quietly wondering whether being multi-disciplinary made me less serious about any one thing.
I shoot weddings. I shoot newborns. I restore furniture. I build lamps. I run a small business with my wife. I write here. Five businesses, one shop in Oak Cliff, and a daughter who's six days old as I'm writing this.
The world has a way of telling you that doing more than one thing means you're not actually committed to any of them. That if you wanted to be great at photography, you'd do only photography. That a serious craftsman would pick a lane and stay in it.
I've never bought that. But there's a difference between not buying it and having proof.
Fearless is proof.
It's not proof I'm the best photographer in Dallas. It's not proof my work is better than yours. It's proof that when a panel of working documentary photographers looked at my portfolio with no context about who I am or what else I do — they saw the same thing I see when I'm shooting a wedding.
That's the validation I didn't realize I needed.
Here's what I actually think about credentials.
Most of them don't matter. A photographer can pay to be "featured" on dozens of blogs, win awards that exist mostly to sell trophies, collect platform badges that any working pro can earn by booking enough clients. None of that tells a bride whether the photos themselves are any good.
The credentials that matter are the ones that are hard to get. The ones where someone with no skin in the game has to look at your work and say yes.
That's the only kind worth chasing. And honestly, those are also the only ones worth talking about.
So if you're reading this and you're an Everyday Erick regular — thanks for being here. I appreciate y'all.
If you're a couple thinking about working with me on your wedding — this is part of why you can trust the work.
And if you're another multi-disciplinary creative wondering whether you have to pick a lane — you don't. Just hold the same standard across everything you do, and let the standard speak for itself.
That's the only thing that's ever really mattered.
— Erick