Carefree
I’m in Marrakech this week, on a holiday.
I know, I’m sure some of the readers of my blog assume that my life is one big photo trip after another, and that I lead a charmed life. I’ve certainly had quite an amazing past two or three years since I went full time doing what I do, but it has come at a cost. Let me explain.
I came to Marrakech 4 years ago for a photographic holiday. At the time, I was still gainfully employed as an IT professional, and my holiday time each year was always consumed with the lure of travel to far off places to make photographs. I would burn myself out over the course of a holiday, working very, very hard to capture the images I sought. It was always good fun and a very enjoyable way to de-stress from my life in IT.
But I haven’t been aware that there has been a change in me over the past four years, and it’s only become apparent to me, now that I am back in Marrakech for a holiday. Everywhere I look, I have memories staring right back at me, reminding me of the person I was four years ago – a carefree IT professional who used his holidays to get his photography bug out of his system. I had very little to worry about at the time. My income was secure and I was so used to being established in what I did (I was an experienced Java / OO programmer with a good working knowledge and experience of being a head DBA for lots of blue chip companies). In short, I had a very recognisable skill set that was in demand and I felt I knew what my future was.
Fast forward to the present, and I’m a much more different person. Running my own photographic workshop business, and being a ‘pro photographer’ has lots of pressures that are different from what I’m used to. For example, I’m now fully responsible for my whole income, and I have to ensure that each year, I can make enough money to keep myself afloat. I can’t afford to take the foot of the accelerator pedal, or to become complacent.
The first few years have been quite a challenge. Setting up a business and ensuring that my house did not get repossessed put me under a lot of stress. I think this is why, when asked, most photographers will tell stary eyed dreamers not to give up the day job.
In my own case, I didn’t give up the day job – it gave me up, in the form of redundancy, and at the time, things were so bad here in the UK, that I had no other alternative but to run with the workshop idea because that was the only form of financial income I was getting at the time. IT Recruitment agencies would not return my calls, because I was just one of the many thousands of IT people who had been put out of work.
I’m entirely grateful that I had the photographic workshops to fall back on. I’m very grateful for what I do now, and I wouldn’t want to change it for the world. I’ve become a very focussed individual, who has to keep thinking ahead, working out new ways to stay in what I do, and because I’m driven by what interests me, I feel that things are going from strength to strength.
Today however, arriving back in Marrakech, has allowed me the luxury of being able to remember who I was 4 years ago, and compare that person to who I am now. I feel a sense of loss in some ways – that carefree aspect of me is hardly there at the moment, and I think this is telling me that I need to have more time out, for myself to relax and just enjoy life – without a camera.
As in everything, balance is what’s required, and I think my trip to Marrakech has acted as a catalyst for me to review where I am at in my life, and more specifically, what I wish to get out of it, and that can only be a good thing.
As creative people, we should take time out to review not only who we are, or where we are going, but also to consider if we’ve lost or regained something about ourselves over the review period. It’s really vital to recognise changes in yourself and re-address them if you feel that you are becoming weighted down with the burden of an overly serious life.
One last thing, if you wish to have a career in photography, I wouldn’t say ‘don’t do it’. I would just stress to you that, like all self employment, it requires a lot more work than a normal job. It can be immensely satisfying because everything you do, you do it for you and not for someone else. But there are pressures involved. Making sure you can earn enough is a very hard thing to pull off – you may be a great photographer, but a lousy business person. You may be a dreamer, who can’t add up. You may be unrealistic about how your business can grow. It’s not easy.
If you love taking pictures, then you can enjoy that, without the burden of trying to make a living from it. If you love running a business, and enjoy all the business related activities involved in it, then I would say – go for it. But if not, then I would say, keep it as a serious hobby, and appreciate that your hobby has no pressures involved in it, apart from the ones you force upon yourself. In short, enjoy what you do, and appreciate that doing it for a full time occupation may not give you that sense of satisfaction you think it will. Running a business is hard. Do it, only if you feel driven to go that way.
I’m off now, for a Moroccan coffee in the old square of Marrakech, and to enjoy just being here. I’ve got a lot to be grateful for, and I’ve learned a lot about business, and myself over the past few years, but it’s perhaps time to take some time out.
Wish you were here,
Bruce.
Wise advice indeed for anybody contemplating a career in the creative arts. I dont suppose many of the 16 to 21 year olds embarking on ‘media’ courses will read this and consider it carefully. As ever its the drive and commitment that delivers success whether its running photography workshops or running other small businesses.
Incidently your writing style suggests that you had more to offer that coding Java all day long :-)
Comment by ian s — 16 January, 2012 @ 7:33 pm
Fantastic post, Bruce. Should be required reading for anyone thinking of going pro.
Mark
Comment by olwick — 16 January, 2012 @ 11:03 pm
Following you while you start up and run your business is a part of the reason I enjoy, and always keep updated, on your blog!
Comment by Mats Berglund — 17 January, 2012 @ 10:30 am
As has been said, very wise advice, Bruce. I feel very fortunate in being able to enjoy photography without the need to pay bills with it. That is, of course, true of any sole-owner business, but it seems to me that it’s more challenging in the creative arts world.
Still, you’re making a great job of it so far and do enjoy the holiday!
Mike
Comment by MikeDGreen — 18 January, 2012 @ 11:27 am
Hello Bruce,
Thank you for such thought-provoking post, it recalls some previous experience. I faced these problems 4 years ago when I quit my Java Team Lead position to become a pro photographer. But as result I got more problems then I had before so eventually I came back to IT. I had understood that there is a huge gap between taking photos and making money via taking photos.
Now I’m an IT guy again with secure income which spends all his holidays travelling abroad with film camera and I’m quite happy except one thing – lack of holidays :)
Being amateur means you are not able to deeply dive into some projects you want to dive. I really want to shoot some serious stuff, to spend more then 2 weeks in Asia villages, to explore characters better – but I can not, my holidays are limited with 2-3 weeks :(
So I realized that the best way for me is to build some IT business with permanent income wich will allow me to manage my time more freely. I’m only 30 and I have plenty of time!
Comment by Eugene Zhulkov — 20 January, 2012 @ 7:18 am
Dear All, thanks so much for the encouragement, and support.
Eugene, so glad you got the chance to realise that having a nice IT career with good income, and time out to enjoy your art is a nice balance after all :-)
I feel there are many wrong assumptions about being ‘pro’ as some of you like to call it. Perhaps the biggest one is that you will have more time for personal projects…. simply not true! You have much less time, because running a business requires more hours per day than a normal job, and when you go do away, you still have to keep an eye on the business. Unlike a job where you are employed by someone else, you cannot switch off entirely.
I think your idea of building up some way of having a permanent income that allows you to manage your time more wisely is a better one, but I feel, even that is like chasing rainbows.
We have a saying in the UK ‘where there is a will, there is a way’. You will always manage to do your projects, but time will always be short. Most of my portfolios were shot during work holiday time….. and most of the year I seldom took the camera out of its bag….. so I think the solution is to have more drive, be better planned and determination to achieve what you set out to do, and to use that time really well.
After all, it’s my experience that the more time you give an IT project, the more the time gets squandered, and the same is true with artists too ;-)
Comment by Bruce Percy — 20 January, 2012 @ 8:37 am
Bruce,
and one more thought about life balance and staying amateur – being IT I used to keep my brains working all the time. Solving a lot of engineering problems, creating systems and sites and so on – different creative IT jobs which load brains heavily. When I had switched I realized after a while that I miss IT ‘puzzle solving’.
Art and it worlds are completely different. Being IT I miss photo, being photo I miss IT :) So I’ve chosen balancing.
Have you ever felt it after quitting IT? How do you handle it?
Comment by Eugene Zhulkov — 20 January, 2012 @ 12:03 pm
Hi Eugene,
Glad you found your vocation. If you love the puzzles side of programming, then I think you made the right decision to go back to it.
I enjoyed programming at the time, and thought that Java was one of the most elegant OO languages out there. But I’ve never missed it. I still meet up with some of my ex colleagues who are good friends of mine, and hear all the ’shop speak’ about the industry, but it leaves me completely cold now.
I was always too vague, and I tended to work on intuition, than fact. Much to the frustration and bewilderment of my colleagues. In short; I think I had always been in the wrong job from the outset. But it did teach me a lot of discipline. Being a DBA for instance, requires you to plan ahead, and to be organised, otherwise you will get fired. I think I learned a lot of very good pro-active skills in my IT career.
Ultimately though, I felt suffocated by most of the environments I worked in. I don’t think I’m meant to work within rigid guidelines. I’m much too lateral for that.
I found IT was getting more pressurised too. Coding standards were getting out of hand – the Agile programming practices, the change of frameworks every six months, the constant need to keep your CV up to date, were too demanding for me.
I get my inspiration from working on my own artistic projects and business ideas. I’m someone who is creative, and follows through with most of his ideas: setting up workshops to different places, coming out with e-books, writing my first book and publishing it, are much more interesting projects for me. They are things I can easily visualise too, and I can see the effects of my efforts straight away.
I feel I’ve achieved a lot in the past few years since I left IT, and in many ways, feel I contribute to the world in a better way as well. Rather than being the guy responsible for some if-statements in some code for a back-office-trading-system, I get emails each week now from people who tell me I’ve inspired them in some way. I also get a lot of satisfaction from participants on workshops feeling they’ve improved their photographic skill in some way, or have become a little bit more aware of their surroundings. I think that’s a pretty terrific thing to have affected in other people. So in that way, I’ve never had a chance to miss IT.
Comment by Bruce Percy — 20 January, 2012 @ 10:26 pm
Having spent over 40 years in IT, I can’t say that I miss it a lot. When I started programming in Assembler in 1968, it was a brave new world. Things that you did were new. In the early 70’s I was a tech lead in an order processing system using terminal input. That was really something then.
Over the years, I often thought of changing course but I could never find anything that would pay the bills as well. IT is not much fun anymore from what I can see.
I envy you for your decision, Bruce and congratulate you on making a success of it.
As an aside, I’m always amazed at the number of IT folks who love photography.
Comment by jeffg53 — 20 January, 2012 @ 11:17 pm
Hi Jeff,
I got pushed :-)
So it wasn’t so much a decision at the time. I think the decisions came later – how to *not* go back to IT…. I felt the longer I was away from IT, the harder it would be to get back into it. I was walking away from a recognised stable career, and now several years down the line, I’m wondering if I could ever go back to it – even if I managed to convince someone to hire me :-)
Having talked to my ex colleagues about it – they have their worries – the industry is changing and job security is changing too. A lot of out-sourcing to developing nations, and of course, age. I’m 44, and felt that I was either going to go into management, or end up working for the local DIY store by the time I was 50.
There are a lot of talented people in IT. It’s full of musicians, poets, writers, and photographers. I think IT is the modern clerical job in some ways. So there’s a lot of souls who haven’t been able to do what they want to do – hiding in IT, and a lot of them have probably found something acceptable and nice there too. I did enjoy my time in it – and the good companies I worked for, were very good and I was happy with the balance of work and time away to do my own thing in my own time.
I never really intended to become a full-time person doing workshops. I don’t really see myself as a photographer. I guess I still have to work on that one :-)
Comment by Bruce Percy — 20 January, 2012 @ 11:43 pm
Calling yourself a ‘photographer’ is far too broad a term. I think that, if you were to ponder it for a while, you could come up with a better description . How about photography instructor, landscape photographer, travel photographer, photographic author. I would think that you could say yes to all of those. i’m sufficient a wanker these days to call myself a photographic artist. It helps when you are entering juried competitions to clarify how you see yourself, or, at least, I think that it does.
Comment by jeffg53 — 21 January, 2012 @ 12:58 am
Hello Bruce, you know me, I am a “rich” doctor being happy that my two passions – music and photography – can be enjoyed and done without the pressure of making any money from it. I always have been very aware of this fact, so I admire each one who is able to make a living from it. The word “balance” is key, chores you have to do to run your business, and the creative fun part of photography, both should be balanced in a way to keep you satisfied. On the positive side, you have a lot of freedom, you are your own boss and decide about the course of your future, you decide what you do and how you do it, no fears of being laid-off, which is a privilege. Freedom on one side, a lot of responsibility on the other side, but I guess you can handle that :-)
Comment by pboehi — 21 January, 2012 @ 11:24 am
Hi Peter,
Yes, I forgot to mention the benefits :-)
Yes, I get to choose my own destiny. I make the decisions as to what trips I set up, how my schedule will be, and I have a lot of freedom. I don’t have to turn up 9-5 to an office each week, or ask permission to go out to get my car serviced, or do anything else.
And you’re absolutely right about the fear of being laid-off. I don’t have that. I’ve met a lot of people who are self employed, and they tell me they feel more secure, because everything they do, is done for their own interests. When you work for someone else, you are disposable, easily got rid of, if they have to change things. Also, the decisions that change a company are out of your hands if you work for someone else – you are at the mercy of what is decided.
I’ve known about all these benefits for a long time. I was just stressing that there are a lot of pressures too. Didn’t mean to sound as if it’s all bad news,…. it’s not. It’s just very demanding in ways that people don’t assume.
I’m much more content doing what I do now. It has its challenges, and its pressures, but overall, it was worth the change, and I don’t for one second regret leaving IT, or working for someone else. It felt too confined, and I often felt suffocated.
The freedom part of running your own show is great.
Comment by Bruce Percy — 21 January, 2012 @ 11:41 am
I’d just like to get back on track with this post, and say one last thing about it.
I didn’t start this post, to analyse how I’m feeling about being a photographic-teacher / photographer / blogger / image maker. I was really just pointing out that in any business where you are the owner and sole proprietor, you need to have time out.
But this post moved on really quickly to the subject of going into the arts to follow a dream and the perils of making it work for you. I’d just like to say this: I never intended to make this my full time living, and I would have been very happy to have continued doing it as a passion on the side lines of my IT career. But d’you know? It’s not what you all think it is.
If you’re thinking of becoming a full time photographer, the chances are, that what you think it’s going to be, and what it actually is – are very different things. The world of arts is not for dreamers, it is for people with focus and drive. If you are thinking of going into it to make a living, then think hard about how that is achievable. Talent does not equal success. Good business acumen will take you a long way, but you also have to have something of value to offer too.
Comment by Bruce Percy — 21 January, 2012 @ 7:34 pm