So I took a break…….
After 15 years of doing photography on a regular bases, both personal work and freelance, I had lost my passion and drive for it. It just wasn’t fun anymore. So I did what any non-sensible person would do. I sold all my gear, closed my website, deleted my old photography based Instagram and FB page, and took a indefinite hiatus.I didn’t soot any pictures besides using my iPhone to take snaps of my doge. I didn’t miss it and I didn’t care. It was nice.
What sucked the fun out of it?
Well mostly myself allowing others to influence how I felt about it. I like photographing people. Unfortunately, when working with people you are potential’y subjected to toxic traits and personalities. There are a lot of individuals that are just prone to disappointing others. They aren’t reliable, responsible or considerate. There were a lot of “no shows” and cancellations. No shows being the worst as often I would arrange hair and makeup, a studio space for the shoots only to have the model not even show up. No call, no email, text or anything to indicate they would not make the shoot.
Other aspects were the frequent inquiries from people wanting to have me shoot them for free or “trade for time”. It’s not that in some cases I do see a benefit to doing “trade for time” collaborations, but for the most part, there is not really anything for me to gain from doing them anymore. Even when agreeing to shoot a model in the past for trade still didn’t insure they would not just flake and no-show. More common than one would think.
Then you have the freelance work. Where I would bust my ass to shoot, edit and retouch final images for a client. Usually doing so in a prompt and quick turnaround situation. Only to have the client put off paying promptly. Even in some cases taking unto a year to be paid for my time and services. Yeah, that gets pretty annoying pretty fast.
It wasn’t all bad. There are definitely aspects and people that made doing photography fun and rewarding. Just not enough to balance out against the negatives. At the end of the day though, it was me allowing others to take advantage. people are who they are and if they are toxic to be associated with then the best choice is to show those individuals the door.
Overall, these were the negative aspects of photography and working with people that just burned me out. I had to stop, get rid of everything and give myself time to gain better perspective. Also If I decided to get back into shooting again I know I wanted to go in a different direction with the types of work I was going to do. My focus is primarily portraiture, beauty and editorial for hire work as well as image editing and retouching services. My new website will reflect these styles of photography more so.
Moving forward, I’m just getting back to shooting. I have to give thanks to model Willa Prescott volunteering to be “tribute” giving me her time to shoot and get acquainted with shooting on my new camera system. Since I am start from scratch I have now jumped from Nikon to Fuji. Willa was very patient with my fumbling through the aggravation of not being fully familiar with my camera yet. Will also have to give thanks to Kevin Hurley for again allowing me to use is studio to shoot. He is a good friend and all round great person and photographer.
Links:
http://www.kevinhurleyphotography.com/
www.willaprescott.com