Comments on: The life of a photographer

By: pboehi

pboehi — Tue, 29 May 2012 11:32:11 +0000

The last thing that I want to be is a professional photographer – keeping it as a hobby actually moves me more towards the “partying like a rockstar” and “travelling to exotic locations” regions allowing me plenty of time to shoot, whenever I decide to do so, minus all the networking/maintenance stuff. Keeping it as a hobby takes away any pressure and gives you the highest degree of freedom.

By: Bruce Percy

Bruce Percy — Fri, 18 May 2012 17:52:04 +0000

Hi Duncan,

I mainly posted this for a bit of humour. But there is a lot of truth in it too.

The past few years, I’ve been getting swamped with emails from photography students wishing to have a career doing what I do. Most say they love taking pictures…. and the attraction of the job will allow them more time to make their own images (not true!). This makes me realise that they’ve got a very wrong view of what the job entails.

So I think for me, they were debunking the idea that you might just have a lot more time for your own photography. I think I still have the same amount of time I had when I was working in IT, but my working time is now spent talking about, teaching, and looking after students on my courses.

I’d love to debunk your last paragraph, but I would definitely say that having your own business is very satisfying. I like being my own boss. But it’s not easier. It’s harder than working in a 9 to 5 job, and there are pressures, just in different ways. As an employee of a corporation, you know you’ll get paid each month. As the owner of a small business, I don’t know that for sure.

So it’s not necessarily photography as a business that is more fulfilling, it’s having *your own* business, of any kind, that is more fulfilling.

If you love photography, then keep it as a hobby and enjoy it in your spare time. If you feel you have something to prove, or say about your photography, or you love passing on your skills, spending time around others (be it wedding, corporate customers, or workshop participants), then that’s good. My own feelings are that a lot of photographers aren’t people people.

I am though. As you know. I’m a really great guy ;-)

By: Duncan Fawkes

Duncan Fawkes — Fri, 18 May 2012 09:05:26 +0000

Well, this is wrong because you do travel to exotic locations and party like a rockstar! :)

In seriousness this is useful for demystifying the working photographer. I think part of the intent of this was to say “look at all the crap you also have to do”. Fact of the matter is all jobs have a high proprotion of crap in them and if I had to do crap anyway, I would rather be doing it for me, trying to sell me and my work rather than doing it all for a faceless corporate entity selling database systems…

So ye, it’s not a glamour lifestyle, but expect it to be fulfilling in so many other ways relative to the corporate norm (feel free to debunk that one for me! :)).