On the road, the most common ice-breaker is, "Where you from?" The second question is usually, "What do you do?", which is the friendly way to ask, "Who are you?"

I sometimes answer with a rattle about Bizware, or if I'm knackered I'll just say, "I'm a geek." Also good for a snicker.

Noticing the camera and tripod slung over my shoulder in my best Ansel Adams imitation, a fellow in Massachusetts persisted, "I thought you might be a photographer?"

My answer could have been, "Well I do like to take pictures" or "I do dabble in photography" or the glib "I do hang with shutterbugs". Anything to avoid the straight answer, "I am a photographer."

Partly, I didn't want to mislead since photography is not my day job. I have no plans to change that. It's too hard to eek out a living with pictures, and I didn't want my composition plans to begin with, "Will that sell?"

A wedding photographer put the nail in the coffin, "Sometimes going to work is like being invited to a traffic accident." Frantic mother-in-laws scurrying about having a cow if the napkins are not folded just right. And the stress to produce perfection without direction. The inability to say, "The shot makes you look fat because you wolfed down three slices of wedding cake,"

The main reason for my hesitation, however, was a reluctance to be pretentious since I'm still just an apprentice to the craft. To say "I am a photographer" would be to declare that I have arrived.

This impasse was breached by a flashback many decades back to my Latin class, which I suspected of never bringing anything useful to the party. Turns out the Roman Legions marched with a fellow in front carrying their "signum". This signum was a military emblem of disks or medallions mounted on a pole. To lose a signum in battle was the height of disgrace. So it was that when a battle grew particularly hard, when fear and thoughts of retreat mounted, the commander would order the signum flung over the heads of the barbarians. The legionnaires would redouble their efforts and fight their way over to their signum, routing the barbarians in the process.

Key was the visualization of victory. They declared victory, saw themselves regaining their signum, and marching on in triumph. They became who they said they were.

So it was that the next time I was asked, I calmly answered, "I'm a photographer", throwing my signum way out there, and then did my best to live up to it.

Sometimes we need to take a stand about who we want to be by saying who we are, and then fulfilling our prophesy.