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I suspect I am in a situation familiar to any number of you. I treat my photography seriously, I'd like others to treat my photography seriouisly, yet at the same time, I have a carreer and family and have to make compromises.
Some choose to risk abandoning security and becoming full time professional photographers. A small minority are successful while many are forced to give up, with their finances ruined and lives stressed beyond reason. Those who make the transition successfully are by and large anything but fine art photographers. Those who say they are full time fine art photographers in fact spend 90 percent of their time doing sales, paper work, accounting, advertizing and just about anything but photography. Even people like Bruce Barnbaum teach workshops and take private students and write articles to support themselves.
I don't have any brilliant solutions to this problem but here's a few thoughts to ponder.
Your long term goals may be impractical but it's possible to set some short term goals which will help those long term ones. For example, you may not be in a position to have a one man show of 50 images, but you could certainly be working on some long term projects so that 10 years from now, when you have the time, money and reputation, you will have enough images with a theme to put together a cohesive show.
Some goals are more practical than others. A porfolio of 12 good images might be doable while 50 isn't. A set of beautiful 8X10 images may be affordable where a set of 16X20's or larger isn't.
It would be nice to have an entire article to yourself, but how about starting with some images in the readers section of your favourite magazine.
MOMA may be out of reach for now, but a local restaurant might want your images. It may well be that you can only get out on a serious shoot a handful of times a year at best, but you can keep working on your skills with small local projects - still lifes, urban, street photography etc.
Having a different job really gets in the way of being taken seriously. When you should be going round the galleries to promote your work to curators, you are at work instead. When you should be out shooting and creating more images, you are taking the kids to hockey, or making those prints for the restaurant.
The only cosolation I can offer you is that you are in good company, many of us struggle with the same issues. Progress to goals can be made, just not as fast as if you had all your time to devote to photography.
Keep in mind that it's your regular job which has allowed you to purchase your nice camera equipment.
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10 comments:
It's good to hear that I'm not alone. Not that I ever thought I were, but it's interesting to read it from you. It's easy to get the illusion that you, being one of my favorite photo bloggers, spend your full time on photography.
The problem, as I see it, is that I get frustrated over not having time to photograph as much as I want, and this frustration actually discourage me when I do have the time. It's a bad spiral that I have to break from time to time.
Well written and something we all grapple with. IT bloke by day. Writer and photographer any other time in my case.
D
George
Discovered your blog via the luminuous landscape. This article resonates strongly with me. I've just started a plan with the aim of being published for Summer 2008, with a follow up exhibition and a calendar for 2009. It's a relatively small project but one that hopefully puts me one more step forward to achieving a higher level of fine art photography.
Martin
Let's not forget those of us part-time, fine-art photographers who work as full-time staff photographers in various other fields. In a way, I think it's more difficult than having a non-photo related job since it's tougher to get excited about shooting on personal time after spending the whole day shooting at work.
In my case, I'm a former photojournalist who is now working as a university photographer. My main emphasis, in both current and former positions, is people. That's one of the reasons I shoot landscapes for my personal work. Having that differentiation between work and personal images keeps both jobs enjoyable and prevents premature burn-out (I hope).
I really envy you folks who are lucky enough to have day jobs away from the camera. If I knew how to do anything else, I would gladly join ya.
Also discovered your blog via Luminous Landscape and enjoy reading it. Reading Chuck's comments brings one photographer to my mind: Fred Herzog. Currently showing at the Vancouver Art gallery www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/exhibitions_herzog.cfm
He worked as a medical photographer and his non-job related work was pretty much ignored for almost fifty years. Anyone in the Vancouver area should visit the exhibition.
A while back I was at a workshop and someone asked what the difference was between an amateur photographer and a professional photographer. The answer was that an amateur photographer had a well-paying day job that could allow him/her to buy the latest equipment and take trips to all the exotic places, and that a professional photographer was a person whose SPOUSE had a well-paying day job that could allow him/her to buy the latest equipment and take trips to all the exotic places.
Those of us who have day jobs often dream of becoming full time photographers, and as you state many do make the leap and with varying degrees of success. I think what people fail to realize is that making money from photography doesn't mean spending more time as a photographer as much as it means spending more time running a photography BUSINESS, and that it is the BUSINESS side of photography that determines financial success. It is a rare person who has the ability to succeed at both, and I would submit that a person who is good at business will have a higher chance for success regardless of their photographic accomplishments than vice versa.
I have taken personal comfort in believing that having to make a living from photography would make it less fulfilling than being able to choose where I go, what I shoot, whether I sell my work or give it away. That may be an illusion but it works for me. In the meantime, as you suggest, instead of thinking on a grand scale (ala MOMA) I try to think small and manageable, with projects I can do out my back door or places I can get to in a few hours. A body of work isn't necessarily something you can create in a weekend or a week. Your 10 year timeframe is realistic and your approach quite reasonable.
Had to do a double take and reread the first sentence or two to make sure it was about you. At first, I thought you were writing about me :>)
I wonder if age has a lot to do with this; mid-life crisis and all that.
Some very good points in the comments. Interesting that even the full time photographers battle to find time for their fine art work and so share the same frustrations.
Like Chuck, I'm a full time shooter but I work for a daily paper in Kelowna, B.C., and although I love my day job, my real work of passion is the photography that I do on my time off, its when I get to work for "myself"
Amen Brutha! You don't even need to full time job to enter this conundrum. Become a stay at home dad and then realize that you'll be spending the golden hour most days chasing a toddler around , and there's no way to take her out to shoot dilapidated bridges at 5 in the morning.
I agree about having manageable short term goals. I have a pretty good relationship with the coffeeshop owner in my neighborhood, so I'm pretty sure I can get a modest 10-20 piece show once or twice a year. I'm also looking in the long term doing a book about my neighborhood rather unique 4th of july parade.
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